community.docker.docker_container module – manage Docker containers

Note

This module is part of the community.docker collection (version 4.1.0).

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.

Synopsis

• Manage the life cycle of Docker containers.

• Supports check mode. Run with --check and --diff to view config difference and list of actions to be taken.

Requirements

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

• Docker API >= 1.25

• backports.ssl_match_hostname (when using TLS on Python 2)

• paramiko (when using SSH with use_ssh_client=false)

• pyOpenSSL (when using TLS)

• pywin32 (when using named pipes on Windows 32)

• requests

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 this collection 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"
auto_remove boolean	Enable auto-removal of the container on daemon side when the container’s process exits. If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of false. Choices: false true
blkio_weight integer	Block IO (relative weight), between 10 and 1000.
ca_path aliases: ca_cert, 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. This option was called ca_cert and got renamed to ca_path in community.docker 3.6.0. The old name has been added as an alias and can still be used.
cap_drop list / elements=string	List of capabilities to drop from the container.
capabilities list / elements=string	List of capabilities to add to the container. This is equivalent to docker run --cap-add, or the docker-compose option cap_add.
cgroup_parent string added in community.docker 1.1.0	Specify the parent cgroup for the container.
cgroupns_mode string added in community.docker 3.0.0	Specify the cgroup namespace mode for the container. The Docker CLI calls this simply cgroupns. Choices: "host" "private"
cleanup boolean	Use with detach=false to remove the container after successful execution. Choices: false ← (default) true
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 any	Command to execute when the container starts. A command may be either a string or a list. Prior to version 2.4, strings were split on commas. See command_handling for differences in how strings and lists are handled.
command_handling string added in community.docker 1.9.0	The default behavior for command (when provided as a list) and entrypoint is to convert them to strings without considering shell quoting rules. (For comparing idempotency, the resulting string is split considering shell quoting rules.) Also, setting command to an empty list of string, and setting entrypoint to an empty list will be handled as if these options are not specified. This is different from idempotency handling for other container-config related options. When this is set to compatibility, which was the default until community.docker 3.0.0, the current behavior will be kept. When this is set to correct, these options are kept as lists, and an empty value or empty list will be handled correctly for idempotency checks. This has been the default since community.docker 3.0.0. Choices: "compatibility" "correct" ← (default)
comparisons dictionary	Allows to specify how properties of existing containers are compared with module options to decide whether the container should be recreated / updated or not. Only options which correspond to the state of a container as handled by the Docker daemon can be specified, as well as networks. Must be a dictionary specifying for an option one of the keys strict, ignore and allow_more_present. If strict is specified, values are tested for equality, and changes always result in updating or restarting. If ignore is specified, changes are ignored. allow_more_present is allowed only for lists, sets and dicts. If it is specified for lists or sets, the container will only be updated or restarted if the module option contains a value which is not present in the container’s options. If the option is specified for a dict, the container will only be updated or restarted if the module option contains a key which is not present in the container’s option, or if the value of a key present differs. The wildcard option * can be used to set one of the default values strict or ignore to all comparisons which are not explicitly set to other values. See the examples for details.
container_default_behavior string	In older versions of this module, various module options used to have default values. This caused problems with containers which use different values for these options. The default value is now no_defaults. To restore the old behavior, set it to compatibility, which will ensure that the default values are used when the values are not explicitly specified by the user. This affects the auto_remove, detach, init, interactive, memory, paused, privileged, read_only, and tty options. Choices: "compatibility" "no_defaults" ← (default)
cpu_period integer	Limit CPU CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) period. See cpus for an easier to use alternative.
cpu_quota integer	Limit CPU CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) quota. See cpus for an easier to use alternative.
cpu_shares integer	CPU shares (relative weight).
cpus float	Specify how much of the available CPU resources a container can use. A value of 1.5 means that at most one and a half CPU (core) will be used.
cpuset_cpus string	CPUs in which to allow execution. For example 1,3 or 1-3.
cpuset_mems string	Memory nodes (MEMs) in which to allow execution 0-3 or 0,1.
debug boolean	Debug mode Choices: false ← (default) true
default_host_ip string added in community.docker 1.2.0	Define the default host IP to use. Must be an empty string, an IPv4 address, or an IPv6 address. With Docker 20.10.2 or newer, this should be set to an empty string ("") to avoid the port bindings without an explicit IP address to only bind to IPv4. See https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.docker/issues/70 for details. By default, the module will try to auto-detect this value from the bridge network’s com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4 option. If it cannot auto-detect it, it will fall back to 0.0.0.0.
detach boolean	Enable detached mode to leave the container running in background. If disabled, the task will reflect the status of the container run (failed if the command failed). If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of true. Choices: false true
device_cgroup_rules list / elements=string added in community.docker 3.11.0	List of cgroup rules to apply to the container.
device_read_bps list / elements=dictionary	List of device path and read rate (bytes per second) from device.
path string / required	Device path in the container.
rate string / required	Device read limit in format <number>[<unit>]. Number is a positive integer. Unit can be one of B (byte), K (kibibyte, 1024B), M (mebibyte), G (gibibyte), T (tebibyte), or P (pebibyte). Omitting the unit defaults to bytes.
device_read_iops list / elements=dictionary	List of device and read rate (IO per second) from device.
path string / required	Device path in the container.
rate integer / required	Device read limit. Must be a positive integer.
device_requests list / elements=dictionary added in community.docker 0.1.0	Allows to request additional resources, such as GPUs.
capabilities list / elements=list	List of lists of strings to request capabilities. The top-level list entries are combined by OR, and for every list entry, the entries in the list it contains are combined by AND. The driver tries to satisfy one of the sub-lists. Available capabilities for the nvidia driver can be found at https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-container-runtime.
count integer	Number or devices to request. Set to -1 to request all available devices.
device_ids list / elements=string	List of device IDs.
driver string	Which driver to use for this device.
options dictionary	Driver-specific options.
device_write_bps list / elements=dictionary	List of device and write rate (bytes per second) to device.
path string / required	Device path in the container.
rate string / required	Device read limit in format <number>[<unit>]. Number is a positive integer. Unit can be one of B (byte), K (kibibyte, 1024B), M (mebibyte), G (gibibyte), T (tebibyte), or P (pebibyte). Omitting the unit defaults to bytes.
device_write_iops list / elements=dictionary	List of device and write rate (IO per second) to device.
path string / required	Device path in the container.
rate integer / required	Device read limit. Must be a positive integer.
devices list / elements=string	List of host device bindings to add to the container. Each binding is a mapping expressed in the format <path_on_host>:<path_in_container>:<cgroup_permissions>.
dns_opts list / elements=string	List of DNS options.
dns_search_domains list / elements=string	List of custom DNS search domains.
dns_servers list / elements=string	List of custom DNS servers.
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"
domainname string	Container domainname.
entrypoint list / elements=string	Command that overwrites the default ENTRYPOINT of the image. See command_handling for differences in how strings and lists are handled.
env dictionary	Dictionary of key,value pairs. 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 }}".
env_file path	Path to a file, present on the target, containing environment variables FOO=BAR. If variable also present in env, then the env value will override.
etc_hosts dictionary	Dict of host-to-IP mappings, where each host name is a key in the dictionary. Each host name will be added to the container’s /etc/hosts file. Instead of an IP address, the special value host-gateway can also be used, which resolves to the host’s gateway IP and allows containers to connect to services running on the host.
exposed_ports aliases: exposed, expose list / elements=string	List of additional container ports which informs Docker that the container listens on the specified network ports at runtime. If the port is already exposed using EXPOSE in a Dockerfile, it does not need to be exposed again.
force_kill aliases: forcekill boolean	Use the kill command when stopping a running container. Choices: false ← (default) true
groups list / elements=string	List of additional group names and/or IDs that the container process will run as.
healthcheck dictionary	Configure a check that is run to determine whether or not containers for this service are “healthy”. See the docs for the HEALTHCHECK Dockerfile instruction for details on how healthchecks work. healthcheck.interval, healthcheck.timeout, healthcheck.start_period, and healthcheck.start_interval are specified as durations. They accept duration as a string in a format that look like: 5h34m56s, 1m30s, and so on. The supported units are us, ms, s, m and h. See also state=healthy.
interval string	Time between running the check. The default used by the Docker daemon is 30s.
retries integer	Consecutive number of failures needed to report unhealthy. The default used by the Docker daemon is 3.
start_interval string added in community.docker 3.10.0	Time between health checks during the start period. This option requires Docker Engine version 25.0 or later. The default used by the Docker daemon is 5s.
start_period string	Start period for the container to initialize before starting health-retries countdown. The default used by the Docker daemon is 0s.
test any	Command to run to check health. Must be either a string or a list. If it is a list, the first item must be one of NONE, CMD or CMD-SHELL.
test_cli_compatible boolean added in community.docker 3.10.0	If set to true, omitting healthcheck.test while providing healthcheck does not disable healthchecks, but simply overwrites the image’s values by the ones specified in healthcheck. This is the behavior used by the Docker CLI. If set to false, omitting healthcheck.test will disable the container’s health check. This is the classical behavior of the module and currently the default behavior. Choices: false ← (default) true
timeout string	Maximum time to allow one check to run. The default used by the Docker daemon is 30s.
healthy_wait_timeout float added in community.docker 3.11.0	When waiting for the container to become healthy if state=healthy, this option controls how long the module waits until the container state becomes healthy. The timeout is specified in seconds. The default, 300, is 5 minutes. Set this to 0 or a negative value to wait indefinitely. Note that depending on the container this can result in the module not terminating. Default: 300.0
hostname string	The container’s hostname.
image string	Repository path and tag used to create the container. If an image is not found or pull is true, the image will be pulled from the registry. If no tag is included, latest will be used. Can also be an image ID. If this is the case, the image is assumed to be available locally. The pull option is ignored for this case.
image_comparison string added in community.docker 3.0.0	Determines which image to use for idempotency checks that depend on image parameters. The default, desired-image, will use the image that is provided to the module via the image parameter. current-image will use the image that the container is currently using, if the container exists. It falls back to the image that is provided in case the container does not yet exist. This affects the env, env_file, exposed_ports, labels, and volumes options. Choices: "desired-image" ← (default) "current-image"
image_label_mismatch string added in community.docker 2.6.0	How to handle labels inherited from the image that are not set explicitly. When ignore, labels that are present in the image but not specified in labels will be ignored. This is useful to avoid having to specify the image labels in labels while keeping labels comparisons strict. When fail, if there are labels present in the image which are not set from labels, the module will fail. This prevents introducing unexpected labels from the base image. Warning: This option is ignored unless labels: strict or *: strict is specified in the comparisons option. Choices: "ignore" ← (default) "fail"
image_name_mismatch string added in community.docker 3.2.0	Determines what the module does if the image matches, but the image name in the container’s configuration does not match the image name provided to the module. This is ignored if image: ignore is set in comparisons. If set to recreate (default) the container will be recreated. If set to ignore the container will not be recreated because of this. It might still get recreated for other reasons. This has been the default behavior of the module for a long time, but might not be what users expect. The default changed from ignore to recreate in community.docker 4.0.0. Choices: "recreate" ← (default) "ignore"
init boolean	Run an init inside the container that forwards signals and reaps processes. If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of false. Choices: false true
interactive boolean	Keep stdin open after a container is launched, even if not attached. If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of false. Choices: false true
ipc_mode string	Set the IPC mode for the container. Can be one of container:<name|id> to reuse another container’s IPC namespace or host to use the host’s IPC namespace within the container.
keep_volumes boolean	Retain anonymous volumes associated with a removed container. Choices: false true ← (default)
kernel_memory string	Kernel memory limit in format <number>[<unit>]. Number is a positive integer. Unit can be B (byte), K (kibibyte, 1024B), M (mebibyte), G (gibibyte), T (tebibyte), or P (pebibyte). Minimum is 4M. Omitting the unit defaults to bytes.
kill_signal string	Override default signal used to kill a running container.
labels dictionary	Dictionary of key value pairs.
links list / elements=string	List of name aliases for linked containers in the format container_name:alias. Setting this will force container to be restarted.
log_driver string	Specify the logging driver. Docker uses json-file by default. See the Docker logging configuration documentation for possible choices.
log_options aliases: log_opt dictionary	Dictionary of options specific to the chosen log_driver. See https://docs.docker.com/engine/admin/logging/overview/ for details. log_driver needs to be specified for log_options to take effect, even if using the default json-file driver.
mac_address string	Container MAC address (for example, 92:d0:c6:0a:29:33). Note that the global container-wide MAC address is deprecated and no longer used since Docker API version 1.44. Use networks[].mac_address instead.
memory string	Memory limit in format <number>[<unit>]. Number is a positive integer. Unit can be B (byte), K (kibibyte, 1024B), M (mebibyte), G (gibibyte), T (tebibyte), or P (pebibyte). Omitting the unit defaults to bytes. If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of "0".
memory_reservation string	Memory soft limit in format <number>[<unit>]. Number is a positive integer. Unit can be B (byte), K (kibibyte, 1024B), M (mebibyte), G (gibibyte), T (tebibyte), or P (pebibyte). Omitting the unit defaults to bytes.
memory_swap string	Total memory limit (memory + swap) in format <number>[<unit>], or the special values unlimited or -1 for unlimited swap usage. Number is a positive integer. Unit can be B (byte), K (kibibyte, 1024B), M (mebibyte), G (gibibyte), T (tebibyte), or P (pebibyte). Omitting the unit defaults to bytes.
memory_swappiness integer	Tune a container’s memory swappiness behavior. Accepts an integer between 0 and 100. If not set, the value will be remain the same if container exists and will be inherited from the host machine if it is (re-)created.
mounts list / elements=dictionary	Specification for mounts to be added to the container. More powerful alternative to volumes.
consistency string	The consistency requirement for the mount. Choices: "cached" "consistent" "default" "delegated"
labels dictionary	User-defined name and labels for the volume. Only valid for the volume type.
no_copy boolean	False if the volume should be populated with the data from the target. Only valid for the volume type. The default value is false. Choices: false true
propagation string	Propagation mode. Only valid for the bind type. Choices: "private" "rprivate" "shared" "rshared" "slave" "rslave"
read_only boolean	Whether the mount should be read-only. Choices: false true
source string	Mount source. For example, this can be a volume name or a host path. If not supplied when mounts[].type=volume an anonymous volume will be created.
target string / required	Path inside the container.
tmpfs_mode string	The permission mode for the tmpfs mount.
tmpfs_size string	The size for the tmpfs mount in bytes in format <number>[<unit>]. Number is a positive integer. Unit can be one of B (byte), K (kibibyte, 1024B), M (mebibyte), G (gibibyte), T (tebibyte), or P (pebibyte). Omitting the unit defaults to bytes.
type string	The mount type. Note that npipe is only supported by Docker for Windows. Choices: "bind" "npipe" "tmpfs" "volume" ← (default)
volume_driver string	Specify the volume driver. Only valid for the volume type. See here for details.
volume_options dictionary	Dictionary of options specific to the chosen volume_driver. See here for details.
name string / required	Assign a name to a new container or match an existing container. When identifying an existing container name may be a name or a long or short container ID.
network_mode string	Connect the container to a network. Choices are bridge, host, none, container:<name|id>, <network_name> or default. Since community.docker 2.0.0, if networks_cli_compatible=true and networks contains at least one network, the default value for network_mode is the name of the first network in the networks list. You can prevent this by explicitly specifying a value for network_mode, like the default value default which will be used by Docker if network_mode is not specified.
networks list / elements=dictionary	List of networks the container belongs to. For examples of the data structure and usage see EXAMPLES below. To remove a container from one or more networks, use networks: strict in the comparisons option. If networks_cli_compatible=false, this will not remove the default network if networks is specified. This is different from the behavior of docker run .... You need to explicitly use networks: strict in comparisons to enforce the removal of the default network (and all other networks not explicitly mentioned in networks) in that case.
aliases list / elements=string	List of aliases for this container in this network. These names can be used in the network to reach this container.
ipv4_address string	The container’s IPv4 address in this network.
ipv6_address string	The container’s IPv6 address in this network.
links list / elements=string	A list of containers to link to.
mac_address string added in community.docker 3.6.0	Endpoint MAC address (for example, 92:d0:c6:0a:29:33). This is only available for Docker API version 1.44 and later. Please note that when a container is attached to a network after creation, this is currently ignored by the Docker Daemon at least in some cases. When passed on creation, this seems to work better.
name string / required	The network’s name.
networks_cli_compatible boolean	If networks_cli_compatible=true (default), this module will behave as docker run --network and will not add the default network if networks is specified. If networks is not specified, the default network will be attached. When networks_cli_compatible=false and networks are provided to the module via the networks option, the module behaves differently than docker run --network: docker run --network other will create a container with network other attached, but the default network not attached. This module with networks set to {name: other} will create a container with both default and other attached. If networks: strict or *: strict is set in comparisons, the default network will be removed afterwards. Choices: false true ← (default)
oom_killer boolean	Whether or not to disable OOM Killer for the container. Choices: false true
oom_score_adj integer	An integer value containing the score given to the container in order to tune OOM killer preferences.
output_logs boolean	If set to true, output of the container command will be printed. Only effective when log_driver is set to json-file, journald, or local. Choices: false ← (default) true
paused boolean	Use with the started state to pause running processes inside the container. If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of false. Choices: false true
pid_mode string	Set the PID namespace mode for the container.
pids_limit integer	Set PIDs limit for the container. It accepts an integer value. Set -1 for unlimited PIDs.
platform string added in community.docker 3.0.0	Platform for the container in the format os[/arch[/variant]]. Note that since community.docker 3.5.0, the module uses both the image’s metadata and the Docker daemon’s information to normalize platform strings similarly to how Docker itself is doing this. If you notice idempotency problems, please create an issue in the community.docker GitHub repository. For older community.docker versions, you can use the comparisons option with platform: ignore to prevent accidental recreation of the container due to this.
privileged boolean	Give extended privileges to the container. If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of false. Choices: false true
publish_all_ports boolean added in community.docker 1.8.0	Publish all ports to the host. Any specified port bindings from published_ports will remain intact when true. Choices: false true
published_ports aliases: ports list / elements=string	List of ports to publish from the container to the host. Use docker CLI syntax: 8000, 9000:8000, or 0.0.0.0:9000:8000, where 8000 is a container port, 9000 is a host port, and 0.0.0.0 is a host interface. Port ranges can be used for source and destination ports. If two ranges with different lengths are specified, the shorter range will be used. Since community.general 0.2.0, if the source port range has length 1, the port will not be assigned to the first port of the destination range, but to a free port in that range. This is the same behavior as for docker command line utility. Bind addresses must be either IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. Hostnames are not allowed. This is different from the docker command line utility. Use the community.general.dig lookup to resolve hostnames. If networks parameter is provided, will inspect each network to see if there exists a bridge network with optional parameter com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4. If such a network is found, then published ports where no host IP address is specified will be bound to the host IP pointed to by com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4. Note that the first bridge network with a com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4 value encountered in the list of networks is the one that will be used. The value all was allowed in earlier versions of this module. Support for it was removed in community.docker 3.0.0. Use the publish_all_ports option instead.
pull any	If set to never, will never try to pull an image. Will fail if the image is not available on the Docker daemon. If set to missing or false, only pull the image if it is not available on the Docker daemon. This is the default behavior. If set to always or true, always try to pull the latest version of the image. Note: images are only pulled when specified by name. If the image is specified as a image ID (hash), it cannot be pulled, and this option is ignored. Note: the values never, missing, and always are only available since community.docker 3.8.0. Earlier versions only support true and false. Choices: "never" "missing" ← (default) "always" true false
pull_check_mode_behavior string added in community.docker 3.8.0	Allows to adjust the behavior when pull=always or pull=true in check mode. Since the Docker daemon does not expose any functionality to test whether a pull will result in a changed image, the module by default acts like pull=always only results in a change when the image is not present. If set to image_not_present (default), only report changes in check mode when the image is not present. If set to always, always report changes in check mode. Choices: "image_not_present" ← (default) "always"
read_only boolean	Mount the container’s root file system as read-only. If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of false. Choices: false true
recreate boolean	Use with present and started states to force the re-creation of an existing container. Choices: false ← (default) true
removal_wait_timeout float	When removing an existing container, the docker daemon API call exists after the container is scheduled for removal. Removal usually is very fast, but it can happen that during high I/O load, removal can take longer. By default, the module will wait until the container has been removed before trying to (re-)create it, however long this takes. By setting this option, the module will wait at most this many seconds for the container to be removed. If the container is still in the removal phase after this many seconds, the module will fail.
restart boolean	Use with started state to force a matching container to be stopped and restarted. Choices: false ← (default) true
restart_policy string	Container restart policy. Place quotes around no option. Choices: "no" "on-failure" "always" "unless-stopped"
restart_retries integer	Use with restart policy to control maximum number of restart attempts.
runtime string	Runtime to use for the container.
security_opts list / elements=string	List of security options in the form of "label:user:User".
shm_size string	Size of /dev/shm in format <number>[<unit>]. Number is positive integer. Unit can be B (byte), K (kibibyte, 1024B), M (mebibyte), G (gibibyte), T (tebibyte), or P (pebibyte). Omitting the unit defaults to bytes. If you omit the size entirely, Docker daemon uses 64M.
state string	absent - A container matching the specified name will be stopped and removed. Use force_kill to kill the container rather than stopping it. Use keep_volumes to retain anonymous volumes associated with the removed container. present - Asserts the existence of a container matching the name and any provided configuration parameters. If no container matches the name, a container will be created. If a container matches the name but the provided configuration does not match, the container will be updated, if it can be. If it cannot be updated, it will be removed and re-created with the requested config. started - Asserts that the container is first present, and then if the container is not running moves it to a running state. Use restart to force a matching container to be stopped and restarted. healthy - Asserts that the container is present and started, and is actually healthy as well. This means that the conditions defined in healthcheck respectively in the image’s HEALTHCHECK (Docker reference for HEALTHCHECK) are satisfied. The time waited can be controlled with healthy_wait_timeout. This state has been added in community.docker 3.11.0. stopped - Asserts that the container is first present, and then if the container is running moves it to a stopped state. To control what will be taken into account when comparing configuration, see the comparisons option. To avoid that the image version will be taken into account, you can also use the image: ignore in the comparisons option. Use the recreate option to always force re-creation of a matching container, even if it is running. If the container should be killed instead of stopped in case it needs to be stopped for recreation, or because state is stopped, please use the force_kill option. Use keep_volumes to retain anonymous volumes associated with a removed container. Use keep_volumes to retain anonymous volumes associated with a removed container. Choices: "absent" "present" "healthy" "stopped" "started" ← (default)
stop_signal string	Override default signal used to stop the container.
stop_timeout integer	Number of seconds to wait for the container to stop before sending SIGKILL. When the container is created by this module, its StopTimeout configuration will be set to this value. When the container is stopped, will be used as a timeout for stopping the container. In case the container has a custom StopTimeout configuration, the behavior depends on the version of the docker daemon. New versions of the docker daemon will always use the container’s configured StopTimeout value if it has been configured.
storage_opts dictionary added in community.docker 1.3.0	Storage driver options for this container as a key-value mapping.
sysctls dictionary	Dictionary of key,value pairs.
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. Note that this option had a default value localhost in older versions. It was removed in community.docker 3.0.0.
tmpfs list / elements=string	Mount a tmpfs directory.
tty boolean	Allocate a pseudo-TTY. If container_default_behavior=compatibility, this option has a default of false. Choices: false true
ulimits list / elements=string	List of ulimit options. A ulimit is specified as nofile:262144:262144.
use_ssh_client boolean added in community.docker 1.5.0	For SSH transports, use the ssh CLI tool instead of paramiko. Choices: false ← (default) true
user string	Sets the username or UID used and optionally the groupname or GID for the specified command. Can be of the forms user, user:group, uid, uid:gid, user:gid or uid:group.
userns_mode string	Set the user namespace mode for the container. Currently, the only valid value are host and the empty string ("").
uts string	Set the UTS namespace mode for the container.
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
volume_driver string	The container volume driver.
volumes list / elements=string	List of volumes to mount within the container. Use docker CLI-style syntax: /host:/container[:mode] Mount modes can be a comma-separated list of various modes such as ro, rw, consistent, delegated, cached, rprivate, private, rshared, shared, rslave, slave, and nocopy. Note that the docker daemon might not support all modes and combinations of such modes. SELinux hosts can additionally use z or Z to use a shared or private label for the volume. Note that Ansible 2.7 and earlier only supported one mode, which had to be one of ro, rw, z, and Z.
volumes_from list / elements=string	List of container names or IDs to get volumes from.
working_dir string	Path to the working directory.

Attributes

Attribute	Support	Description
action_group	Action groups: community.docker.docker, docker	Use group/docker or group/community.docker.docker in module_defaults to set defaults for this module.
check_mode	Support: partial When trying to pull an image, the module assumes this is never changed in check mode except when the image is not present on the Docker daemon. This behavior can be configured with pull_check_mode_behavior.	Can run in check_mode and return changed status prediction without modifying target.
diff_mode	Support: full	Will return details on what has changed (or possibly needs changing in check_mode), when in diff mode.

Notes

Note

• For most config changes, the container needs to be recreated. This means that the existing container has to be destroyed and a new one created. This can cause unexpected data loss and downtime. You can use the comparisons option to prevent this.

• If the module needs to recreate the container, it will only use the options provided to the module to create the new container (except image). Therefore, always specify all options relevant to the container.

• When restart is set to true, the module will only restart the container if no config changes are detected.

• 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_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.

• This module does not use the Docker SDK for Python to communicate with the Docker daemon. It uses code derived from the Docker SDK or Python that is included in this collection.

Examples

- name: Create a data container
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: mydata
    image: busybox
    volumes:
      - /data

- name: Re-create a redis container
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: myredis
    image: redis
    command: redis-server --appendonly yes
    state: present
    recreate: true
    exposed_ports:
      - 6379
    volumes_from:
      - mydata

- name: Restart a container
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: myapplication
    image: someuser/appimage
    state: started
    restart: true
    links:
     - "myredis:aliasedredis"
    devices:
     - "/dev/sda:/dev/xvda:rwm"
    ports:
     # Publish container port 9000 as host port 8080
     - "8080:9000"
     # Publish container UDP port 9001 as host port 8081 on interface 127.0.0.1
     - "127.0.0.1:8081:9001/udp"
     # Publish container port 9002 as a random host port
     - "9002"
     # Publish container port 9003 as a free host port in range 8000-8100
     # (the host port will be selected by the Docker daemon)
     - "8000-8100:9003"
     # Publish container ports 9010-9020 to host ports 7000-7010
     - "7000-7010:9010-9020"
    env:
        SECRET_KEY: "ssssh"
        # Values which might be parsed as numbers, booleans or other types by the YAML parser need to be quoted
        BOOLEAN_KEY: "yes"

- name: Container present
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: mycontainer
    state: present
    image: ubuntu:14.04
    command: sleep infinity

- name: Stop a container
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: mycontainer
    state: stopped

- name: Start 4 load-balanced containers
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: "container{{ item }}"
    recreate: true
    image: someuser/anotherappimage
    command: sleep 1d
  with_sequence: count=4

- name: Remove container
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: ohno
    state: absent

- name: Syslogging output
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: myservice
    image: busybox
    log_driver: syslog
    log_options:
      syslog-address: tcp://my-syslog-server:514
      syslog-facility: daemon
      # NOTE: in Docker 1.13+ the "syslog-tag" option was renamed to "tag" for
      # older docker installs, use "syslog-tag" instead
      tag: myservice

- name: Create db container and connect to network
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: db_test
    image: "postgres:latest"
    networks:
      - name: "{{ docker_network_name }}"

- name: Start container, connect to network and link
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: sleeper
    image: ubuntu:14.04
    networks:
      - name: TestingNet
        ipv4_address: "172.16.1.100"
        aliases:
          - sleepyzz
        links:
          - db_test:db
      - name: TestingNet2

- name: Start a container with a command
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: sleepy
    image: ubuntu:14.04
    command: ["sleep", "infinity"]

- name: Add container to networks
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: sleepy
    networks:
      - name: TestingNet
        ipv4_address: 172.16.1.18
        links:
          - sleeper
      - name: TestingNet2
        ipv4_address: 172.16.10.20

- name: Update network with aliases
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: sleepy
    networks:
      - name: TestingNet
        aliases:
          - sleepyz
          - zzzz

- name: Remove container from one network
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: sleepy
    networks:
      - name: TestingNet2
    comparisons:
      networks: strict

- name: Remove container from all networks
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: sleepy
    comparisons:
      networks: strict

- name: Start a container and use an env file
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: agent
    image: jenkinsci/ssh-slave
    env_file: /var/tmp/jenkins/agent.env

- name: Create a container with limited capabilities
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: sleepy
    image: ubuntu:16.04
    command: sleep infinity
    capabilities:
      - sys_time
    cap_drop:
      - all

- name: Finer container restart/update control
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: test
    image: ubuntu:18.04
    env:
      arg1: "true"
      arg2: "whatever"
    volumes:
      - /tmp:/tmp
    comparisons:
      image: ignore   # do not restart containers with older versions of the image
      env: strict   # we want precisely this environment
      volumes: allow_more_present   # if there are more volumes, that's ok, as long as `/tmp:/tmp` is there

- name: Finer container restart/update control II
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: test
    image: ubuntu:18.04
    env:
      arg1: "true"
      arg2: "whatever"
    comparisons:
      '*': ignore  # by default, ignore *all* options (including image)
      env: strict   # except for environment variables; there, we want to be strict

- name: Start container with healthstatus
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: nginx-proxy
    image: nginx:1.13
    state: started
    healthcheck:
      # Check if nginx server is healthy by curl'ing the server.
      # If this fails or timeouts, the healthcheck fails.
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "--fail", "http://nginx.host.com"]
      interval: 1m30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 30s
      start_interval: 10s

- name: Remove healthcheck from container
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: nginx-proxy
    image: nginx:1.13
    state: started
    healthcheck:
      # The "NONE" check needs to be specified
      test: ["NONE"]

- name: Create a tmpfs with a size and mode
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: tmpfs test
    image: ubuntu:22.04
    state: started
    mounts:
      - type: tmpfs
        target: /cache
        tmpfs_mode: "1700" # only readable to the owner
        tmpfs_size: "16G"

- name: Start container with block device read limit
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: test
    image: ubuntu:18.04
    state: started
    device_read_bps:
      # Limit read rate for /dev/sda to 20 mebibytes per second
      - path: /dev/sda
        rate: 20M
    device_read_iops:
      # Limit read rate for /dev/sdb to 300 IO per second
      - path: /dev/sdb
        rate: 300

- name: Start container with GPUs
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: test
    image: ubuntu:18.04
    state: started
    device_requests:
      - # Add some specific devices to this container
        device_ids:
          - '0'
          - 'GPU-3a23c669-1f69-c64e-cf85-44e9b07e7a2a'
      - # Add nVidia GPUs to this container
        driver: nvidia
        count: -1  # this means we want all
        capabilities:
          # We have one OR condition: 'gpu' AND 'utility'
          - - gpu
            - utility
          # See https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-container-runtime#supported-driver-capabilities
          # for a list of capabilities supported by the nvidia driver

- name: Start container with storage options
  community.docker.docker_container:
    name: test
    image: ubuntu:18.04
    state: started
    storage_opts:
      # Limit root filesystem to 12 MB - note that this requires special storage backends
      # (https://fabianlee.org/2020/01/15/docker-use-overlay2-with-an-xfs-backing-filesystem-to-limit-rootfs-size/)
      size: 12m

Return Values

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

Key	Description
container dictionary	Facts representing the current state of the container. Matches the docker inspection output. Empty if state=absent. If detach=false, will include Output attribute containing any output from container run. Returned: success; or when state=started and detach=false, and when waiting for the container result did not fail Sample: "{ \"AppArmorProfile\": \"\", \"Args\": [], \"Config\": { \"AttachStderr\": false, \"AttachStdin\": false, \"AttachStdout\": false, \"Cmd\": [ \"/usr/bin/supervisord\" ], \"Domainname\": \"\", \"Entrypoint\": null, \"Env\": [ \"PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin\" ], \"ExposedPorts\": { \"443/tcp\": {}, \"80/tcp\": {} }, \"Hostname\": \"8e47bf643eb9\", \"Image\": \"lnmp_nginx:v1\", \"Labels\": {}, \"OnBuild\": null, \"OpenStdin\": false, \"StdinOnce\": false, \"Tty\": false, \"User\": \"\", \"Volumes\": { \"/tmp/lnmp/nginx-sites/logs/\": {} }, ... }"
status integer	In case a container is started without detaching, this contains the exit code of the process in the container. Before community.docker 1.1.0, this was only returned when non-zero. Returned: when state=started and detach=false, and when waiting for the container result did not fail Sample: 0

Authors

• Cove Schneider (@cove)

• Joshua Conner (@joshuaconner)

• Pavel Antonov (@softzilla)

• Thomas Steinbach (@ThomasSteinbach)

• Philippe Jandot (@zfil)

• Daan Oosterveld (@dusdanig)

• Chris Houseknecht (@chouseknecht)

• Kassian Sun (@kassiansun)

• Felix Fontein (@felixfontein)

Collection links

• Issue Tracker
• Repository (Sources)
• Ask for help (Docker)
• Ask for help (Docker Compose)
• Ask for help (Docker Swarm)
• Submit a bug report
• Request a feature
• Communication