Interactive shell using Docker Compose - shell

Question

Is there any way to start an interactive shell in a container using Docker Compose only? I've tried something like this, in my docker-compose.yml:
myapp:
image: alpine:latest
entrypoint: /bin/sh
When I start this container using docker-compose up it's exited immediately. Are there any flags I can add to the entrypoint command, or as an additional option to myapp, to start an interactive shell?
I know there are native docker command options to achieve this, just curious if it's possible using only Docker Compose, too.

Answer 1

You need to include the following lines in your docker-compose.yml:
version: "3"
services:
app:
image: app:1.2.3
stdin_open: true # docker run -i
tty: true # docker run -t
The first corresponds to -i in docker run and the second to -t.

Answer 2

The canonical way to get an interactive shell with docker-compose is to use:
docker-compose run --rm myapp
(With the service name myapp taken from your example. More general: it must be an existing service name in your docker-compose file, myapp is not just a command of your choice. Example: bash instead of myapp would not work here.)
You can set stdin_open: true, tty: true, however that won't actually give you a proper shell with up, because logs are being streamed from all the containers.
You can also use
docker exec -ti <container name> /bin/bash
to get a shell on a running container.

Answer 3

The official getting started example (https://docs.docker.com/compose/gettingstarted/) uses the following docker-compose.yml:
version: "3.9"
services:
web:
build: .
ports:
- "8000:5000"
redis:
image: "redis:alpine"
After you start this with docker-compose up, you can shell into either your redis container or your web container with:
docker-compose exec redis sh
docker-compose exec web sh

Answer 4

docker-compose run myapp sh should do the deal.
There is some confusion with up/run, but docker-compose run docs have great explanation: https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/run

Answer 5

If anyone from the future also wanders up here:
docker-compose exec service_name sh
or
docker-compose exec service_name bash
or you can run single lines like
docker-compose exec service_name php -v
That is after you already have your containers up and running.
The service_name is defined in your docker-compose.yml file

Answer 6

Using docker-compose, I found the easiest way to do this is to do a docker ps -a (after starting my containers with docker-compose up) and get the ID of the container I want to have an interactive shell in (let's call it xyz123).
Then it's a simple matter to execute
docker exec -ti xyz123 /bin/bash
and voila, an interactive shell.

Answer 7

This question is very interesting for me because I have problems, when I run container after execution finishes immediately exit and I fixed with -it:
docker run -it -p 3000:3000 -v /app/node_modules -v $(pwd):/app <your_container_id>
And when I must automate it with docker compose:
version: '3'
services:
frontend:
stdin_open: true
tty: true
build:
context: .
dockerfile: Dockerfile.dev
ports:
- "3000:3000"
volumes:
- /app/node_modules
- .:/app
This makes the trick: stdin_open: true, tty: true
This is a project generated with create-react-app
Dockerfile.dev it looks this that:
FROM node:alpine
WORKDIR '/app'
COPY package.json .
RUN npm install
COPY . .
CMD ["npm", "run", "start"]
Hope this example will help other to run a frontend(react in example) into docker container.

Answer 8

I prefer
docker-compose exec my_container_name bash

Answer 9

If the yml is called docker-compose.yml it can be launched with a simple $ docker-compose up. The corresponding attachment of a terminal can be simply (consider that the yml has specified a service called myservice):
$ docker-compose exec myservice sh
However, if you are using a different yml file name, such as docker-compose-mycompose.yml, it should be launched using $ docker-compose -f docker-compose-mycompose.yml up. To attach an interactive terminal you have to specify the yml file too, just like:
$ docker-compose -f docker-compose-mycompose.yml exec myservice sh

Answer 10

A addition to this old question, as I only had the case last time. The difference between sh and bash. So it can happen that for some bash doesn't work and only sh does.
So you can:
docker-compose exec CONTAINER_NAME sh
and in most cases: docker-compose exec CONTAINER_NAME bash
use.
If you have time. The difference between sh and bash is well explained here:
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/sh-vs-bash

Answer 11

You can do docker-compose exec SERVICE_NAME sh on the command line. The SERVICE_NAME is defined in your docker-compose.yml. For example,
services:
zookeeper:
image: wurstmeister/zookeeper
ports:
- "2181:2181"
The SERVICE_NAME would be "zookeeper".

Answer 12

According to documentation -> https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/run/
You can use this docker-compose run --rm app bash
[app] is the name of your service in docker-compose.yml