Where does Docker store the content of running containers?

Question

Is there a way to browse the files that were created within a running container?

Say I'm starting a container using

sudo docker run --name myContainer -d ubuntu

Which has the ID eefea5f7df52e8c1aad24b4068564237021dc7b953026f0adb696878a3d25f72

I thought there is a folder created (with the name of the container-ID) somewhere in /var/lib/docker/ containing the files that where created,...

I found a couple of folders in /var/lib/docker/aufs/diff (so of them are also deleted when removing containers), but I have no idea how to map them the container IDs.

Answer 1

I'm not sure why you'd want to know this, but it is possible.

Using docker inspect, you can find out more about the internals of a container. Try issuing docker inspect eefea5f7df52e8c1aad24b4068564237021dc7b953026f0adb696878a3d25f72 to see a full tree of information about a container.

I believe docker inspect --format='{{.GraphDriver.Data.LowerDir}}' eefea5f7df52e8c1aad24b4068564237021dc7b953026f0adb696878a3d25f72 gives you the path to where your container data is stored. You'll need root access to open that folder though, with good reason as it is not a good idea to try and alter data there!