How to see docker image contents

Question

I did a docker pull and can list the image that\'s downloaded. I want to see the contents of this image. Did a search on the net but no straight answer.

Answer 1

With Docker EE for Windows (17.06.2-ee-6 on Hyper-V Server 2016) all contents of Windows Containers can be examined at C:\ProgramData\docker\windowsfilter\ path of the host OS.

No special mounting needed.

Folder prefix can be found by container id from docker ps -a output.

Answer 2

There is a free open source tool called Anchore that you can use to scan container images. This command will allow you to list all files in a container image

anchore-cli image content myrepo/app:latest files

https://anchore.com/opensource/

Answer 3

We can try a simpler one as follows:

docker image inspect image_id

This worked in Docker version:

DockerVersion": "18.05.0-ce"

Answer 4

You can just run an interactive shell container using that image and explore whatever content that image has.

For instance:

docker run -it image_name sh

Or following for images with an entrypoint

docker run -it --entrypoint sh image_name

Or, if you want to see how the image was build, meaning the steps in its Dockerfile, you can:

docker image history --no-trunc image_name > image_history

The steps will be logged into the image_history file.

Answer 5

To list the detailed content of an image you have to run docker run --rm image/name ls -alR where --rm means remove as soon as exits form a container.

Answer 6

docker save nginx > nginx.tar
tar -xvf nginx.tar

Following files are present:

• manifest.json – Describes filesystem layers and name of json file that has the Container properties.
• .json – Container properties
• – Each “layerid” directory contains json file describing layer property and filesystem associated with that layer. Docker stores Container images as layers to optimize storage space by reusing layers across images.

https://sreeninet.wordpress.com/2016/06/11/looking-inside-container-images/

OR

you can use dive to view the image content interactively with TUI

https://github.com/wagoodman/dive