docker ps shows empty list

Ville Miekk-oja picture Ville Miekk-oja · Mar 15, 2016 · Viewed 74.2k times · Source

I built a docker image from a docker file. Build said it succeeded. But when I try to show docker containers through docker ps (also tried docker ps -a), it shows an empty list. What is weird is that I'm still able to somehow push my docker image to dockerhub by calling docker push "container name".

I wonder what's going on? I'm on Windows 7, and just installed the newest version of dockertoolbox.

Answer

Sven Koschnicke picture Sven Koschnicke · Mar 15, 2016

docker ps shows (running) containers. docker images shows images.

A successfully build docker image should appear in the list which docker images generates. But only a running container (which is an instance of an image) will appear in the list from docker ps (use docker ps -a to also see stopped containers). To start a container from your image, use docker run.