Running an Interactive Shell in a Docker Container

If you need to start an interactive shell inside a Docker Container, perhaps to explore the filesystem or debug running processes, use docker exec with the -i and -t flags.

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The -i flag keeps input open to the container, and the -t flag creates a pseudo-terminal that the shell can attach to. These flags can be combined like this:

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docker exec -it container-name sh

This will run the sh shell in the specified container, giving you a basic shell prompt. To exit back out of the container, type exit then press ENTER:

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exit

If your container image includes a more advanced shell such as bash, you could replace sh with bash above.