Sometimes an issue on one of your servers may interrupt your Docker based development and stop all the containers that you haven’t fully configured to be auto-started just yet. In such cases, it will be useful for you to know how to find stopped containers and restart them all using a single command.

List Stopped Containers in Docker

Using the filtering functionality of the docker ps command, we can quickly get all the necessary information for the stopped containers:

root@xps:~# docker ps -a -f status=exited
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
014a746dbb9d wordpress "docker-entrypoint.s…" 21 hours ago Exited (0) 21 hours ago romantic_fermi
080cf6412ac4 hello-world "/hello" 3 days ago Exited (0) 3 days ago modest_mestorf

Since we want to restart of these containers, we’ll probably need to pass their docker container IDs to another command, like docker start.

Hence the command above should be run with the -q parameter, which skips all the non-essential info and only returns the list of docker containers:

root@xps:~# docker ps -a -q -f status=exited
014a746dbb9d
080cf6412ac4

Restart all the Stopped Containers in Docker

Now all we have left to do is pass the above command to the docker start, like shown below. One by one, all the container IDs will appear as Docker restarts them:

root@xps:~# docker start $(docker ps -a -q -f status=exited)
014a746dbb9d
080cf6412ac4

Sure enough, when we do docker ps now, we should see these containers:

root@xps:~# docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
9e7115e34496 wordpress "docker-entrypoint.s…" 19 hours ago Up 19 hours 127.0.0.1:80->80/tcp, 127.0.0.1:443->443/tcp wordpress
014a746dbb9d wordpress "docker-entrypoint.s…" 21 hours ago Up 2 seconds 80/tcp romantic_fermi
c397a72fbd58 mariadb:latest "docker-entrypoint.s…" 21 hours ago Up 21 hours 3306/tcp db

I can see the 014a746dbb9d container, but the other one is not running. Want to know why? It’s because this was a Hello, world Docker container – it’s not mean to stay running in background. Instead, it shows Hello, world and exits. It’s usually run like this:

root@xps:~# docker run hello-world

Hello from Docker!
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.

To generate this message, Docker took the following steps:
1. The Docker client contacted the Docker daemon.
2. The Docker daemon pulled the "hello-world" image from the Docker Hub.
(amd64)
3. The Docker daemon created a new container from that image which runs the
executable that produces the output you are currently reading.
4. The Docker daemon streamed that output to the Docker client, which sent it
to your terminal.

To try something more ambitious, you can run an Ubuntu container with:
$ docker run -it ubuntu bash

Share images, automate workflows, and more with a free Docker ID:
https://hub.docker.com/

For more examples and ideas, visit:
https://docs.docker.com/get-started/


That's it for today. Enjoy!

See Also

• Docker
• Docker – Stop Containers
• Docker – List containers
• Migrate Docker container
• Remove Unused Volumes in Docker
• Inspect Docker containers

Now and then, especially when working on a development environment, you need to stop multiple Docker containers. Quite often, you need to stop all of the currently running containers. I’m going to show you one of the possible ways.

Docker: Stop a Container

You need to use a container name or container ID with the docker stop command.

For example, I have an nginx load balancer container:

root@s5:~ # docker ps -f name=nginx
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
32cd3e477546 nginx:latest "nginx -g 'daemon of…" 11 months ago Up About a minute 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp nginx

Based on this output, I can stop my nginx container like this:

root@s5:~ # docker stop nginx
nginx

… or like that:

root@s5:~ # docker stop 32cd3e477546
32cd3e477546

Docker: Stop Multiple Containers

Since I also have a MariaDB container named db, I might need stop it together with nginx.

Here’s the info on the db container:

root@s5:~ # docker ps -f name=db
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
c745794419a9 mariadb:latest "docker-entrypoint.s…" 9 months ago Up 4 seconds 3306/tcp db

If I ever decide to stop both nginx and db together, I can do it like this:

root@s5:~ # docker stop nginx db
nginx
db

Docker: Stop All Containers

As you can see from previous examples, docker stop simply takes a list of containers to stop. If there’s more than one container, just use space as a delimiter between container names or IDs.

This also allows us to use a clever shell expansion trick: you can some other command, and pass its output to the docker stop container.

For instance, this shows us the list of all the IDs for currently running Docker containers:

root@s5:~ # docker ps -q
510972d55d8c
1b8b1657736e
c745794419a9
32cd3e477546

What we can do now is pass the result of this command as the parameter for the docker stop command:

root@s5:~ # docker stop $(docker ps -q)
510972d55d8c
1b8b1657736e
c745794419a9
32cd3e477546

And just to check, running docker ps now won’t show any running containers:

root@s5:~ # docker ps -q

IMPORTANT: make sure you double-check what you’re doing! Specifically, run docker ps -q, compare it to docker ps, this kind of thing. Because once containers stopped you may not have an easy way to generate the list of same containers to restart.

In my case, I’m just specifying them manually as the parameters for docker start:

root@s5:~ # docker start 510972d55d8c 1b8b1657736e c745794419a9 32cd3e477546
510972d55d8c
1b8b1657736e
c745794419a9
32cd3e477546

That’s it for today! Hope you enjoyed this quick how-to, let me know if you have any questions, Docker and whatnot!

See Also

• Docker Software
• List containers in Docker
• Restart Stopped Docker containers
• Docker Inspect
• Remove Unused Docker volumes