Examples of services

that keep data inside containers

Examples in this chapter create containers that keep data inside themselves.

Docker Docs: Compose CLI Docker Docs: Compose file reference Examples: Compose

The images and containers are created or deleted by the services defined in the common Compose file called basic.yml.

It’s assumed that the current directory is the one which contains the Compose files.

Table of contents
  1. Examples of services
    1. Starting all services at once
    2. Stopping all services at once
    3. Starting individual services
    4. Stopping individual services

Starting all services at once

You can start all services at once using the following command:

docker compose --profile all -f basic.yml -p example-basic up -d

The --profile parameter defines the profile value. Only the services belonging to this profile will be processed. The value all will include all services, because they all declare this profile value.

The -f parameter defines the name of the Compose file to use.

The -p parameter defines the name of the Compose project, which is also called Compose application.

The up command will start up the services.

The -d parameter means that the service containers should keep running detached in the background.

The first start up may take some time, because the base images must be pulled from the Docker Hub repositories.

All created images will be called example-basic, but their tags will be different.

You can check it using the following command:

docker images --filter=reference='example-basic:*' --format 'table {{.Repository}}\t{{.Tag}}'

REPOSITORY      TAG
example-basic   opengl
example-basic   ubuntu
example-basic   debian

There will be also new containers running. Their names will begin with example-basic-, followed by the service name.

You can check it using the following command:

docker container ls --filter 'name=example-basic' --format 'table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}'

NAMES                  STATUS
example-basic-opengl   Up 30 seconds
example-basic-debian   Up 30 seconds
example-basic-ubuntu   Up 30 seconds

Stopping all services at once

You can shut down all services at once and remove all created assets using the following command:

docker compose --profile all -f basic.yml -p example-basic down --volumes --rmi all

The --profile parameter defines the profile value. Only the services belonging to this profile will be processed. The value all will include all services, because they all declare this profile value.

The -f parameter defines the name of the Compose file to use.

The -p parameter defines of the Compose project, which is also called Compose application.

The down command will shut down the services.

The --volumes parameter means, that the services should remove all the volumes declared in the ‘volumes’ section of the Compose file and all anonymous volumes attached to the containers.

Warning Be careful with the --volumes parameter because you can delete your data unintentionally!

The --rmi all parameter means that the services should remove all the images they have created.

Starting individual services

You can start a particular service by providing the appropriate profile value.

The following fragment of the sample Compose file basic.yml defines the service ubuntu, which creates a new Ubuntu based image and container:

services:
  ubuntu:
    profiles:
      - all
      - ubuntu
    build:
      context: ./docker
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
      target: stage_basic-ubuntu
    image: example-basic:ubuntu
    container_name: example-basic-ubuntu
    hostname: example-basic-ubuntu
    shm_size: "256m"
    environment:
      - VNC_RESOLUTION=1024x768
    ports:
      - "45901:5901"  # VNC
      - "46901:6901"  # noVNC

Key profiles: The service is part of the profiles all and ubuntu.

Key build: A new image example-basic:ubuntu is built from the stage stage_basic-ubuntu of the Dockerfile.

The rest of the keys defines the configuration of a new container example-basic-ubuntu, which will be created and started detached in the background.

You can start the service using the following command:

docker compose --profile ubuntu -f basic.yml -p example-basic up -d

You can check that only a single new images has been created:

docker images --filter=reference='example-basic:*' --format 'table {{.Repository}}\t{{.Tag}}'

REPOSITORY      TAG
example-basic   ubuntu

Also only a single new container has been started:

docker container ls --filter 'name=example-basic' --format 'table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}'

NAMES                  STATUS
example-basic-ubuntu   Up 3 minutes

You can connect to the container as it’s described in the section Headless working and check that also the common assets have been applied.

The following animation shows how to check the user profile customization.

Basic Ubuntu container

You can also check that the following keyboard layouts have been configured:

  • English (US)
  • German
  • Italian
  • Spanish

Stopping individual services

You can stop and remove the basic Ubuntu container created above using the following command:

docker compose --profile ubuntu -f basic.yml -p example-basic down --volumes --rmi all

The related image will be also removed, unless it’s used by some other container.

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