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

To make it simple,

1. Container ID is your host name inside docker
2. Container information is available inside /proc/self/cgroup

To get host name,

hostname

or

uname -n

or

cat /etc/host

Output can be redirected to any file & read back from application E.g.: # hostname > /usr/src//hostname.txt

Answer 2

The simplest way i found is : docker inspect --format="{{.Id}}"

Answer 3

I've found that in 17.09 there is a simplest way to do it within docker container:

$ cat /proc/self/cgroup | head -n 1 | cut -d '/' -f3
4de1c09d3f1979147cd5672571b69abec03d606afcc7bdc54ddb2b69dec3861c

Or like it has already been told, a shorter version with

$ cat /etc/hostname
4de1c09d3f19

Or simply:

$ hostname
4de1c09d3f19

Answer 4

This will get the full container id from within a container:

cat /proc/self/cgroup | grep "cpu:/" | sed 's/\([0-9]\):cpu:\/docker\///g'