Your First Docker Container

Time for hands-on Docker! You'll start containers, interact with them, and manage their lifecycle using the core commands.

docker run is your gateway to containers. It checks for the image locally, pulls it from Docker Hub if missing, then creates and starts a container.

Run the classic hello-world container — it prints a message and exits. Perfect for a first smoke test.

That output confirms Docker pulled and ran the image successfully. The message came from inside the container, proving it executed its task.

For an interactive shell, add -it: -i keeps STDIN open, -t allocates a terminal. Try docker run -it ubuntu bash to drop into Ubuntu.

Your prompt changed — you're now inside the Ubuntu container. Run normal Linux commands like ls and pwd, then type exit to leave.

To run a container in the background, use detached mode with -d. Try docker run -d nginx to launch an Nginx server without tying up your terminal.

docker ps lists every running container, showing ID, image, command, and status — your window into what's active right now.

Stop a container gracefully with docker stop <id>, using the ID or name from docker ps.

You've learned several fundamental Docker commands. Let's test your knowledge!

You ran and managed your first containers: docker run, -it for shells, -d for background, docker ps to list, docker stop to halt. Next: building images.