How to stop individual and all Docker processes

Why This Article

This blog post was born out of the need to share a code snippet that I use almost every day at work. I stop and start Docker processes frequently, and I wanted to create a resource that would help others do the same.

I hope you find this blog post helpful!

Introduction

Docker is a popular containerization platform that allows you to run applications in isolated environments. This can be useful for improving performance, security, and portability. However, it can also be confusing to manage multiple Docker processes.

This blog post will explain how to stop individual and all Docker processes using the Docker CLI.

Stopping an individual Docker process

To stop an individual Docker process, you can use the docker stop command. This command takes the container ID or name as an argument. For example, to stop the container with the ID a0c59618bf9e, you would run the following command:

docker stop a0c59618bf9e

You can also stop multiple Docker processes at once by passing multiple container IDs or names to the docker stop command. For example, to stop the containers with the IDs a0c59618bf9e and b1d2f3g4h5i6, you would run the following command:

docker stop a0c59618bf9e b1d2f3g4h5i6

Stopping all Docker processes
To stop all Docker processes, you can use the docker stop $(docker ps -a -q) command. This command will pipe the output of the docker ps -a -q command, which lists all container IDs, to the docker stop command.

For example, to stop all Docker processes, you would run the following command:

docker stop $(docker ps -a -q)

Note: This command will stop all Docker processes, including those that are running in detached mode.

Explanation of the commands
The following is a brief explanation of the commands used in this blog post:

docker stop: This command stops a Docker container.

docker ps: This command lists Docker containers.
-a: This option tells the docker ps command to list all containers, even those that are stopped.
-q: This option tells the docker ps command to only list the container IDs.
$(command)`: This is a shell syntax that allows you to execute the output of a command.

Conclusion

Stopping Docker processes is a simple task, but it is important to understand the different commands that you can use. This blog post has explained how to stop individual and all Docker processes using the Docker CLI.