103 — Container Lifecycle Management

Master the complete container lifecycle: creating, starting, stopping, restarting, and removing containers. Learn to manage container resources and troubleshoot common issues.

Learning Objectives

Understand container states and lifecycle

Start, stop, restart, and pause containers

Execute commands in running containers

Inspect container details and resource usage

Manage multiple containers efficiently

Step 1

Understanding container states

Learn about the different states a container can be in: created, running, paused, exited.

Commands to Run

docker run -d --name demo-nginx nginx

docker ps

docker stop demo-nginx

docker ps -a

What This Does

Containers transition through states: created → running → stopped (exited). The `ps` command shows running containers, while `ps -a` shows all containers regardless of state.

Expected Outcome

You'll see the container appear in 'docker ps' with UP status, then after stopping it will show 'Exited' status in 'docker ps -a'.

Pro Tips

1
Running containers consume resources; stopped containers don't
2
Stopped containers retain their filesystem and configuration
3
You can restart stopped containers without losing data