Running and inspecting images

You can run any image in a container from within VS Code. VS Code also provides functionality for inspecting, managing and otherwise working with images and containers on your machine.

Exercise

• Run the "i-love-lamp:latest" image from the Docker Explorer in VS Code

• View the application running on port 3000

• View the image logs

• Attach a shell to the running image and inspect the file system

• Stop the image

• Remove the image

Answer

• Open the Docker Explorer view by clicking on the Docker icon in the Activity Bar

• In the "images" section, locate the "i-love-lamp" image. Expand it to find the "latest" image.

• Right-click the image and select "Run"

• Notice that there is now a container running

• Open your browser and navigate to "http://localhost:3000"

• View the application running in the Docker container

• Right click the container in the "Containers" section of the Docker Explorer view and select "View Logs"

• View the logs from the container

• Right click the container in the "Containers" section of the Docker Explorer view and select "Attach Shell"

• The integrated terminal will open connected to the Docker container

• Navigate the file system with cd to change directory and ls to list the file system contents

Note that if you navigate to "/" with cd /, you will get to the root of the container. Notice how it appears as if the container is an entire Linux machine with a complete file system.

• Right click the container in the "Containers" section of the Docker Explorer view and select "Stop"

• Right click the container in the "Containers" section of the Docker Explorer view and select "Remove"

• The container will be removed from the "Containers" section in VS Code