Create Docker Container from Errored Container

When I’m trying to “dockerize” an applciation I usually have to work through some wonkiness.

To diagnose a container that has errored out, I, obviously, look at the logs via docker logs -f [container_name]. That is sometimes helpful. It will, at minimum tell me where I need to focus on the new container I’m going to create.

Pre-requisites to being able to build a diagnosis container:

• You need to use CMD, not ENTRYPOINT in the Dockerfile
  • with CMD you’ll be able to start a shell, with ENTRYPOINT your diagnosis container will just keep trying to run that

To create a diagnosis container, do the following:

• Check your failed container ID by docker ps -a
• Create docker image form the container with docker commit
  • example: docker commit -m "diagnosis" [failed container id]
• Check the newly create docker image ID by docker images
• docker run -it [new container image id] sh
  • this takes you into a container immediately after the error occurred.

Hope this helps someone else.

Cheers.