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docker
Dominique Paul
Dominique Paul

Reputation: 1751

What does COMMAND in 'docker ps' mean?

docker ps or docker container ls returns an overview of all running containers. The meaning of all columns is clear to me, except one. What does the column 'COMMAND' mean?

enter image description here

Upvotes: 3

Views: 13721

Answers (2)

nischay goyal
nischay goyal

Reputation: 3480

This is the command which is passed to the container. 

$ docker run -d busybox top
$docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID     IMAGE      COMMAND     CREATED        STATUS        PORTS    NAMES
3eca7c034b21     busybox    "top"       6 seconds ago  Up 5 seconds           recursing_dirac

If you check above, top is the command which has been passed to the busybox container and that's what it's showing in the docker ps -a.

Upvotes: 4

John Kugelman
John Kugelman

Reputation: 361547

It's the command passed to docker run <image> [command].

$ docker run -d ubuntu sleep 60
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID      IMAGE      COMMAND        CREATED           STATUS
f0c9cd92a938      ubuntu     "sleep 60"     3 seconds ago     Up 1 second

If no command was specified there then it's the CMD from the Dockerfile. In ubuntu's case that would be CMD ["/bin/bash"]:

$ docker run -di ubuntu
$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID      IMAGE      COMMAND        CREATED           STATUS
9cd752ee86f4      ubuntu     "/bin/bash"    4 seconds ago     Up 2 seconds

Upvotes: 2

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