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docker

How to see docker image contents

I did a docker pull and can list the image that's downloaded. I want to see the contents of this image. Did a search on the net but no straight answer.

Solution

  • If the image contains a shell, you can run an interactive shell container using that image and explore whatever content that image has. If sh is not available, the busybox ash shell might be.

    For instance:

    docker run -it image_name sh

    Or following for images with an entrypoint

    docker run -it --entrypoint sh image_name

    Or if you want to see how the image was built, meaning the steps in its Dockerfile, you can:

    docker image history --no-trunc image_name > image_history

    The steps will be logged into the image_history file.