Docker ps and logs

Run the docker ps command to show that there are no running containers:

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES

Run docker ps -a to show both running and stopped containers:

$ docker ps -a

The output of the preceding command will be as shown in the following screenshot:

There are a few things to note here. The STATUS field says that container 5e3820a43ffc exited about one minute ago. In order to get container log information, we can use the docker logs command:

$ docker logs 5e3820a43ffc

The output of the preceding command will be as shown in the following screenshot:

The last message says caught SIGTERM, shutting down. It happened after we pressed Ctrl + C. In order to run a container in background mode, we can use the -d option with the docker run command:

$ docker run -d httpd
5d549d4684c8e412baa5e30b20697b72593d87130d383c2273f83b5ceebc4af3

It generates a random ID, the first 12 characters of which are used for the container ID. Along with the generated ID, a random container name is also generated.

Run docker ps to verify the container ID, name, and status:

$ docker ps

The output of the preceding command will be as shown in the following screenshot: