Basic Container Commands

Think of Docker CLI as a control panel for your container fleet.

You have sections:

• Monitoring: What’s running? What exists? What happened?
• Lifecycle: Start, stop, pause, restart
• Cleanup: Remove containers, remove images, reclaim space
• Inspection: Look inside, get details

Each button (command) does one specific thing.

Monitoring Commands

# List running containers
docker ps

# List all containers (including stopped)
docker ps -a

# List images
docker images

# View logs of a container
docker logs <container_id_or_name>

# Follow logs in real-time
docker logs -f <container_id_or_name>

Lifecycle Commands

# Create and start a container (what we've been doing)
docker run <image>

# Stop a running container (graceful)
docker stop <container_id_or_name>

# Start a stopped container
docker start <container_id_or_name>

# Restart a container
docker restart <container_id_or_name>

# Kill a container (forceful)
docker kill <container_id_or_name>

Cleanup Commands

# Remove a stopped container
docker rm <container_id_or_name>

# Remove an image
docker rmi <image_id_or_name>

# Remove all stopped containers
docker container prune

# Remove all unused images
docker image prune

# Remove everything unused (containers, images, networks, volumes)
docker system prune

Inspection Commands

# Get detailed info about a container
docker inspect <container_id_or_name>

# See resource usage (live)
docker stats

# See what files changed in a container
docker diff <container_id_or_name>

By default, Docker gives containers random names like elegant_galileo or hungry_tesla. These are fun but not useful.

Name your containers:

docker run --name my-web-server nginx

Now you can use my-web-server instead of remembering container IDs:

docker logs my-web-server
docker stop my-web-server
docker rm my-web-server

Container names must be unique. If you try to create a container with a name that exists, you’ll get an error.

Every container gets a unique 64-character ID:

a4f2c8b3e9d1f6a5b4c3d2e1f0a9b8c7d6e5f4a3b2c1d0e9f8a7b6c5d4e3f2a1

You don’t need the full ID. The first few characters are usually enough:

docker stop a4f2    # Works if no other container starts with "a4f2"
docker logs a4f2c8  # More specific if needed

This applies to images too.

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