How can I get Docker Linux container information f

Question

I would like to make my docker containers aware of their configuration, the same way you can get information about EC2 instances through metadata.

I can use (provided docker is listening on port 4243)

curl http://172.17.42.1:4243/containers/$HOSTNAME/json

to get some of its data, but would like to know if there is a better way at least the get the full ID of the container, because HOSTNAME is actually shortened to 12 characters and docker seems to perform a "best match" on it.

Also, how can I get the external IP of the docker host (other than accessing the EC2 metadata, which is specific to AWS)

Answer 1

You can use this command line to identify the current container ID (tested with docker 1.9).

awk -F"-|/." '/1:/ {print $3}' /proc/self/cgroup

Then, a little request to Docker API (you can share /var/run/docker.sock) to retrieve all informations.

Answer 2

Some posted solutions have stopped working due to changes in the format of /proc/self/cgroup. Here is a single GNU grep command that should be a bit more robust to format changes:

grep -o -P -m1 'docker.*\K[0-9a-f]{64,}' /proc/self/cgroup

For reference, here are snippits of /proc/self/cgroup from inside docker containers that have been tested with this command:

Linux 4.4:

11:pids:/system.slice/docker-cde7c2bab394630a42d73dc610b9c57415dced996106665d427f6d0566594411.scope
...
1:name=systemd:/system.slice/docker-cde7c2bab394630a42d73dc610b9c57415dced996106665d427f6d0566594411.scope

Linux 4.8 - 4.13:

11:hugetlb:/docker/afe96d48db6d2c19585572f986fc310c92421a3dac28310e847566fb82166013
...
1:name=systemd:/docker/afe96d48db6d2c19585572f986fc310c92421a3dac28310e847566fb82166013

Answer 3

You can communicate with docker from inside of a container using unix socket via Docker Remote API:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/api/docker_remote_api/

In a container, you can find out a shortedned docker id by examining $HOSTNAME env var. According to doc, there is a small chance of collision, I think that for small number of container, you do not have to worry about it. I don't know how to get full id directly.

You can inspect container similar way as outlined in banyan answer:

GET /containers/4abbef615af7/json HTTP/1.1

Response:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
         "Id": "4abbef615af7......  ",
         "Created": "2013.....",
         ...
}

Alternatively, you can transfer docker id to the container in a file. The file is located on "mounted volume" so it is transfered to container:

docker run -t -i -cidfile /mydir/host1.txt -v /mydir:/mydir ubuntu /bin/bash

The docker id (shortened) will be in file /mydir/host1.txt in the container.

Answer 4

As an aside, if you have the pid of the container and want to get the docker id of that container, a good way is to use nsenter in combination with the sed magic above:

nsenter -n -m -t pid -- cat /proc/1/cgroup | grep -o -e "docker-.*.scope" | head -n 1 | sed "s/docker-\(.*\).scope/\\1/"

Answer 5

Unless overridden, the hostname seems to be the short container id in Docker 1.12

root@d2258e6dec11:/project# cat /etc/hostname
d2258e6dec11

Externally

$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED                 STATUS                      PORTS               NAMES
d2258e6dec11        300518d26271        "bash"              5 minutes ago       

$ docker -v
Docker version 1.12.0, build 8eab29e, experimental

Answer 6

Use docker inspect.

$ docker ps # get conteiner id
$ docker inspect 4abbef615af7
[{
    "ID": "4abbef615af780f24991ccdca946cd50d2422e75f53fb15f578e14167c365989",
    "Created": "2014-01-08T07:13:32.765612597Z",
    "Path": "/bin/bash",
    "Args": [
        "-c",
        "/start web"
    ],
    "Config": {
        "Hostname": "4abbef615af7",
...

Can get ip as follows.

$ docker inspect -format="{{ .NetworkSettings.IPAddress }}" 2a5624c52119
172.17.0.24