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.
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:
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
You may also rebuild all applications at once, which is useful when enabling/disabling a plugin that modifies all applications:
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.
You may also trigger a restart on all applications at one time:
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.
Multiple process types can be scaled at once:
Issuing the ps:scale command with no process type argument will output the current scaling settings for an application:
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.
You may also stop all applications at once:
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.
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.
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
Setting the restart policy
You can configure this via the ps:set-restart-policy command:
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:
If it is not committed to the repository, the DOKKU_SCALE file will otherwise be automatically generated based on your ps:scale settings.