Michael Crump

Michael Crump

Works at Vonage in Developer Relations

Day 6 - Exploring Docker for Windows - Accessing Files inside a Container

2 minute read

Intro

In this mini-series, I plan to walk you through Docker as I learn it.

A complete list of post in this series is included below :

Accessing Files inside a Container

One thing that I’m finding that I need more and more is access to the files inside of a container. There are a lot of great guides on mapping a drive using Windows Explorer and I’d encourage you read this one if you are looking for that. If you are like me and using Windows 10 to host and work with Docker, than you might want to use the command-line instead of Windows explorer. Open up PowerShell and type the following :

docker run -it microsoft/dotnet:nanoserver powershell

We are now running PowerShell in a container inside of a PowerShell on our local machine. You can quickly determine which version of PowerShell you are using by listing out a directory as shown below.

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

PS C:\> dir
    Directory: C:\

Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d-----         4/9/2017   8:14 PM                Program Files
d-----        7/16/2016   5:09 AM                Program Files (x86)
d-r---        3/20/2017   7:34 AM                Users
d-----        3/20/2017   7:35 AM                Windows
-a----       11/20/2016   3:32 AM           1894 License.txt

Notice that it has a License.txt file. You can use the type command to list out its contents and will see it is a host container image licensed by Microsoft. You can navigate to any directory, list out the contents, add or delete a file.

Note : If you are using Windows Server, then you can open Computer Management and see the drive after running the docker run -it microsoft/dotnet:nanoserver powershell command. You can simply assign the drive a letter and examine it in File Explorer. Just FYI - I wouldn’t do this in a production environment.

Environment variables inside a Container

While you are already in PowerShell, you can also grab environment variables by running the following command :

ls env:\

Which outputs the following :

Name                           Value
----                           -----
ALLUSERSPROFILE                C:\ProgramData
APPDATA                        C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator\AppData\Roaming
CommonProgramFiles             C:\Program Files\Common Files
CommonProgramFiles(x86)        C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files
CommonProgramW6432             C:\Program Files\Common Files
COMPUTERNAME                   A6F1D1FF8D31
ComSpec                        C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe
DOTNET_SDK_DOWNLOAD_URL        https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/dotnet/Sdk/1.0.1/dotnet-dev-win-x64.1.0.1.zip
DOTNET_SDK_VERSION             1.0.1
LOCALAPPDATA                   C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator\AppData\Local
NUGET_XMLDOC_MODE              skip
NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS           2
OS                             Windows_NT
Path                           C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPo...
PATHEXT                        .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD
PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE         AMD64
PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER           Intel64 Family 6 Model 61 Stepping 4, GenuineIntel
PROCESSOR_LEVEL                6
PROCESSOR_REVISION             3d04
ProgramData                    C:\ProgramData
ProgramFiles                   C:\Program Files
ProgramFiles(x86)              C:\Program Files (x86)
ProgramW6432                   C:\Program Files
PSMODULEPATH                   C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\Program Files\...
PUBLIC                         C:\Users\Public
SystemDrive                    C:
SystemRoot                     C:\Windows
TEMP                           C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator\AppData\Local\Temp
TMP                            C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator\AppData\Local\Temp
USERDOMAIN                     User Manager
USERNAME                       ContainerAdministrator
USERPROFILE                    C:\Users\ContainerAdministrator
windir                         C:\Windows

This again is an easy way to determine if you are in a container or not and contains other special environment variables such as .NET Core which we looked at in the last post.

Wrap-up

As always, thanks for reading and smash one of those share buttons to give this post some love if you found it helpful. Also, feel free to leave a comment below or follow me on twitter for daily links and tips.

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