How to check if the docker engine and a docker container are running?

Question

In a script, I need to check:

a) Is the docker engine running?
b) Given a container name, is that docker container running?

[the initial wording of this

Answer 1

For the answer to your first question refer to this answer - https://stackoverflow.com/a/65447848/4691279

For your second question - you can use command like docker ps --filter "name=<<>>" to check whether a particular container is running or not.

• If Docker and Container both are running then you will get output like below:

  $ docker ps --filter "name=nostalgic_stallman"
  
  CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES       
  9b6247364a03        busybox             "top"               2 minutes ago       Up 2 minutes                            nostalgic_stallman
  

• If Docker is not running then you will get an error message saying docker daemon is not running.

• If Docker running but Container is not running then you will not get the container name in the output of this command.