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Process and Container Management

New

Introduced in 0.3.14, Enhanced in 0.7.0

ps <app>                                       # List processes running in app container(s)
ps:inspect <app>                               # Displays a sanitized version of docker inspect for an app
ps:rebuild <app>                               # Rebuild an app from source
ps:rebuildall                                  # Rebuild all apps from source
ps:report [<app>] [<flag>]                     # Displays a process report for one or more apps
ps:restart <app>                               # Restart app container(s)
ps:restart-policy <app>                        # Shows the restart-policy for an app
ps:restartall                                  # Restart all deployed app containers
ps:scale <app> <proc>=<count> [<proc>=<count>] # Get/Set how many instances of a given process to run
ps:set-restart-policy <app> <policy>           # Sets app restart-policy
ps:start <app>                                 # Start app container(s)
ps:startall                                    # Start all deployed app containers
ps:stop <app>                                  # Stop app container(s)
ps:stopall                                     # Stop all app container(s)

By default, Dokku will only start a single web process - if defined - though process scaling can be managed by the ps plugin or via a custom DOKKU_SCALE file.

Info

The web proctype is the only proctype that will invoke custom checks as defined by a CHECKS file. It is also the only process type that will be launched in a container that is either proxied via nginx or bound to an external port.

Usage

Listing processes running in an app container

To find out if your application's containers are running the commands you expect, simply run the ps command against that application.

dokku ps node-js-app

Inspecting app containers

New

Introduced in 0.13.0

A common administrative task to perform is calling docker inspect on the containers that are running for an application. This can be an error-prone task to perform, and may also reveal sensitive environment variables if not done correctly. Dokku provides a wrapper around this command via the ps:inspect command:

dokku ps:inspect node-js-app

This command will gather all the running container IDs for your application and call docker inspect, sanitizing the output data so it can be copy-pasted elsewhere safely.

Rebuilding applications

There are some Dokku commands which will not automatically rebuild an application's environment, or which can be told to skip a rebuild. For instance, you may wish to run multiple config:set commands without a restart so as to speed up configuration. In these cases, you can ultimately trigger an application rebuild using ps:rebuild

dokku ps:rebuild node-js-app

You may also rebuild all applications at once, which is useful when enabling/disabling a plugin that modifies all applications:

dokku ps:rebuildall

Info

The ps:rebuild and ps:rebuildall commands only work for applications for which there is a source, and thus will only always work deterministically for Git-deployed application. Please see the images documentation and tar documentation in for more information concerning rebuilding those applications.

Restarting applications

Applications can be restarted, which is functionally identical to calling the release_and_deploy function on an application. Please note that any linked containers must be started before the application in order to have a successful boot.

dokku ps:restart node-js-app

You may also trigger a restart on all applications at one time:

dokku ps:restartall

ps:scale command

Dokku can also manage scaling itself via the ps:scale command. This command can be used to scale multiple process types at the same time.

dokku ps:scale node-js-app web=1

Multiple process types can be scaled at once:

dokku ps:scale node-js-app web=1 worker=1

Issuing the ps:scale command with no process type argument will output the current scaling settings for an application:

dokku ps:scale node-js-app
-----> Scaling for node-js-app
-----> proctype           qty
-----> --------           ---
-----> web                1
-----> worker             1

Stopping applications

Deployed applications can be stopped using the ps:stop command. This turns off all running containers for an application, and will result in a 502 Bad Gateway response for the default nginx proxy implementation.

dokku ps:stop node-js-app

You may also stop all applications at once:

dokku ps:stopall

Starting applications

All stopped containers can be started using the ps:start command. This is similar to running ps:restart, except no action will be taken if the application containers are running.

dokku ps:start node-js-app

Starting all applications

In some cases, it may be necessary to start all applications from scratch - e.g. if all Docker containers have been manually stopped. This can be executed via the ps:startall command, which supports parallelism in the same manner ps:rebuildall, ps:restartall, and ps:stopall do.

Be aware that no action will be taken if the application containers are running.

dokku ps:startall

Restart policies

New

Introduced in 0.7.0

By default, Dokku will automatically restart containers that exit with a non-zero status up to 10 times via the on-failure Docker restart policy.

Showing the current restart policy

The ps:restart-policy command will show the currently configured restart policy for an application. The default policy is on-failure:10

dokku ps:restart-policy node-js-app
=====> node-js-app restart-policy:
on-failure:10

Setting the restart policy

You can configure this via the ps:set-restart-policy command:

# always restart an exited container
dokku ps:set-restart-policy node-js-app always
-----> Setting restart policy: always
# never restart an exited container
dokku ps:set-restart-policy node-js-app no
-----> Setting restart policy: no
# only restart it on Docker restart if it was not manually stopped
dokku ps:set-restart-policy node-js-app unless-stopped
-----> Setting restart policy: unless-stopped
# restart only on non-zero exit status
dokku ps:set-restart-policy node-js-app on-failure
-----> Setting restart policy: on-failure
# restart only on non-zero exit status up to 20 times
dokku ps:set-restart-policy node-js-app on-failure:20
-----> Setting restart policy: on-failure:20

Restart policies have no bearing on server reboot, and Dokku will always attempt to restart your applications at that point unless they were manually stopped.

Manually managing process scaling

You can optionally commit a DOKKU_SCALE file to the root of your repository - not to the /home/dokku/APP directory. Dokku expects this file to contain one line for every process defined in your Procfile.

Example:

web=1
worker=2

If it is not committed to the repository, the DOKKU_SCALE file will otherwise be automatically generated based on your ps:scale settings.