You are reading an unmaintained version of the Ansible documentation. Unmaintained Ansible versions can contain unfixed security vulnerabilities (CVE). Please upgrade to a maintained version. See the latest Ansible documentation.

community.docker.docker_container_exec module – Execute command in a docker container

Note

This module is part of the community.docker collection (version 2.7.3).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.docker. You need further requirements to be able to use this module, see Requirements for details.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.docker.docker_container_exec.

New in community.docker 1.5.0

Synopsis 

Executes a command in a Docker container.

Requirements 

The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.

Docker API >= 1.20
Docker SDK for Python: Please note that the docker-py Python module has been superseded by docker (see here for details). For Python 2.6, docker-py must be used. Otherwise, it is recommended to install the docker Python module. Note that both modules should *not* be installed at the same time. Also note that when both modules are installed and one of them is uninstalled, the other might no longer function and a reinstall of it is required.
Docker SDK for Python >= 1.8.0 (use docker-py for Python 2.6)

Parameters 

Parameter	Comments
api_version aliases: docker_api_version string	The version of the Docker API running on the Docker Host. Defaults to the latest version of the API supported by Docker SDK for Python and the docker daemon. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable `DOCKER_API_VERSION` will be used instead. If the environment variable is not set, the default value will be used. Default: `"auto"`
argv list / elements=string	The command to execute. Since this is a list of arguments, no quoting is needed. Exactly one of argv and command must be specified.
ca_cert aliases: tls_ca_cert, cacert_path path	Use a CA certificate when performing server verification by providing the path to a CA certificate file. If the value is not specified in the task and the environment variable `DOCKER_CERT_PATH` is set, the file `ca.pem` from the directory specified in the environment variable `DOCKER_CERT_PATH` will be used.
chdir string	The directory to run the command in.
client_cert aliases: tls_client_cert, cert_path path	Path to the client’s TLS certificate file. If the value is not specified in the task and the environment variable `DOCKER_CERT_PATH` is set, the file `cert.pem` from the directory specified in the environment variable `DOCKER_CERT_PATH` will be used.
client_key aliases: tls_client_key, key_path path	Path to the client’s TLS key file. If the value is not specified in the task and the environment variable `DOCKER_CERT_PATH` is set, the file `key.pem` from the directory specified in the environment variable `DOCKER_CERT_PATH` will be used.
command string	The command to execute. Exactly one of argv and command must be specified.
container string / required	The name of the container to execute the command in.
debug boolean	Debug mode Choices: `false` ← (default) `true`
detach boolean added in community.docker 2.1.0	Whether to run the command synchronously (detach=false, default) or asynchronously (detach=true). If set to `true`, stdin cannot be provided, and the return values `stdout`, `stderr` and `rc` are not returned. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true`
docker_host aliases: docker_url string	The URL or Unix socket path used to connect to the Docker API. To connect to a remote host, provide the TCP connection string. For example, `tcp://192.0.2.23:2376`. If TLS is used to encrypt the connection, the module will automatically replace `tcp` in the connection URL with `https`. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable `DOCKER_HOST` will be used instead. If the environment variable is not set, the default value will be used. Default: `"unix://var/run/docker.sock"`
env dictionary added in community.docker 2.1.0	Dictionary of environment variables with their respective values to be passed to the command ran inside the container. Values which might be parsed as numbers, booleans or other types by the YAML parser must be quoted (for example `"true"`) in order to avoid data loss. Please note that if you are passing values in with Jinja2 templates, like `"{{ value }}"`, you need to add `\| string` to prevent Ansible to convert strings such as `"true"` back to booleans. The correct way is to use `"{{ value \| string }}"`.
ssl_version string	Provide a valid SSL version number. Default value determined by ssl.py module. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable `DOCKER_SSL_VERSION` will be used instead.
stdin string	Set the stdin of the command directly to the specified value. Can only be used if detach=false.
stdin_add_newline boolean	If set to `true`, appends a newline to stdin. Choices: `false` `true` ← (default)
strip_empty_ends boolean	Strip empty lines from the end of stdout/stderr in result. Choices: `false` `true` ← (default)
timeout integer	The maximum amount of time in seconds to wait on a response from the API. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable `DOCKER_TIMEOUT` will be used instead. If the environment variable is not set, the default value will be used. Default: `60`
tls boolean	Secure the connection to the API by using TLS without verifying the authenticity of the Docker host server. Note that if validate_certs is set to `true` as well, it will take precedence. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable `DOCKER_TLS` will be used instead. If the environment variable is not set, the default value will be used. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true`
tls_hostname string	When verifying the authenticity of the Docker Host server, provide the expected name of the server. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable `DOCKER_TLS_HOSTNAME` will be used instead. If the environment variable is not set, the default value will be used. The current default value is `localhost`. This default is deprecated and will change in community.docker 2.0.0 to be a value computed from docker_host. Explicitly specify `localhost` to make sure this value will still be used, and to disable the deprecation message which will be shown otherwise.
tty boolean	Whether to allocate a TTY. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true`
use_ssh_client boolean added in community.docker 1.5.0	For SSH transports, use the `ssh` CLI tool instead of paramiko. Requires Docker SDK for Python 4.4.0 or newer. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true`
user string	If specified, the user to execute this command with.
validate_certs aliases: tls_verify boolean	Secure the connection to the API by using TLS and verifying the authenticity of the Docker host server. If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable `DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY` will be used instead. If the environment variable is not set, the default value will be used. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true`

Notes 

Note

Does not support check_mode.
Connect to the Docker daemon by providing parameters with each task or by defining environment variables. You can define DOCKER_HOST, DOCKER_TLS_HOSTNAME, DOCKER_API_VERSION, DOCKER_CERT_PATH, DOCKER_SSL_VERSION, DOCKER_TLS, DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY and DOCKER_TIMEOUT. If you are using docker machine, run the script shipped with the product that sets up the environment. It will set these variables for you. See https://docs.docker.com/machine/reference/env/ for more details.
When connecting to Docker daemon with TLS, you might need to install additional Python packages. For the Docker SDK for Python, version 2.4 or newer, this can be done by installing docker[tls] with ansible.builtin.pip.
Note that the Docker SDK for Python only allows to specify the path to the Docker configuration for very few functions. In general, it will use $HOME/.docker/config.json if the DOCKER_CONFIG environment variable is not specified, and use $DOCKER_CONFIG/config.json otherwise.
This module uses the Docker SDK for Python to communicate with the Docker daemon.

Examples 

- name: Run a simple command (command)
  community.docker.docker_container_exec:
    container: foo
    command: /bin/bash -c "ls -lah"
    chdir: /root
  register: result

- name: Print stdout
  debug:
    var: result.stdout

- name: Run a simple command (argv)
  community.docker.docker_container_exec:
    container: foo
    argv:
      - /bin/bash
      - "-c"
      - "ls -lah > /dev/stderr"
    chdir: /root
  register: result

- name: Print stderr lines
  debug:
    var: result.stderr_lines

Return Values 

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key	Description
exec_id string added in community.docker 2.1.0	The execution ID of the command. Returned: success and detach=true Sample: `"249d9e3075655baf705ed8f40488c5e9434049cf3431976f1bfdb73741c574c5"`
rc integer	The exit code of the command. Returned: success and detach=false Sample: `0`
stderr string	The standard error output of the container command. Returned: success and detach=false
stdout string	The standard output of the container command. Returned: success and detach=false

Authors

Felix Fontein (@felixfontein)

Collection links

Issue Tracker Repository (Sources) Submit a bug report Request a feature Communication

community.docker.docker_container_exec module – Execute command in a docker container

Synopsis

Requirements

Parameters

Notes

Examples

Return Values