How to copy file to docker container

How to Copy Files with Docker cp to your Docker Container

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If you need to copy files from the Docker host to your Docker container, this tutorial is for you.

In this tutorial, you will learn to copy files from the Docker host to a Docker container using various approaches.

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Table of Contents

Prerequisites

If you’d like to follow along step-by-step, ensure you have the following:

Copying Files with the docker cp Command

To start this tutorial, you will learn to copy files from Docker host to the containers using the docker cp command. The docker cp command copies files or folders between a container and the local filesystem of your Docker host and vice versa.

Let’s learn how to use Docker cp command with an example.

1. Open a terminal on your local machine.

2. Create a file named myfile.txt using the touch command. The myfile.txt will be copied from the docker host to the container.

3. Execute the docker run command. The below docker run will create a new container in the background. The below command contains three parameters described below:

4. Verify if the Docker container is successfully created using the docker ps command. After you execute the docker ps command, you should see a new value generated under the attribute CONTAINER ID (In the below case ccae4670f030 ) using the NGINX image that confirms the container is successfully created.

Before you execute the Docker cp command, The syntax of the Docker cp command is:

Additionally, you can also add the options with the below parameters in the command as follows:

5. Next, execute the docker cp command. The docker cp command will copy the myfile.txt that you created earlier to the containers /usr/share directory. ccae4670f030 is the container ID to which the myfile.txt will be copied.

7. After logging in to the container, verify if myfile.txt has been copied to the container using the ls command.

Copying Files using DockerFile

In the previous section, you learned how to copy the files into the container by running the Docker cp command. What if you need to copy multiple files in one go? Certainly, running multiple commands becomes an overhead! To solve running multiple cp commands, why not try copying files or folders into containers using Dockerfile with COPY commands?

Deploying a container and copying the files/folders using Dockerfile allows you to remove the manual copying steps you did in the previous section. A Dockerfile is a text document that contains all the commands a user could call on the command line to assemble an image.

Let’s create a Dockerfile, run a container from it, and finally copy the files.

1. Create a folder named

/host-to-container-copy-demo, then change ( cd ) the working directory to that folder. This folder will contain all of the files you’ll be creating in this demo.

2. Now, create two text files named myfile1.txt and myfile2.txt, copy and paste them into the files, and save them to the

3. Create another file, copy/paste the below configuration, and save the file as Dockerfile inside the

/host-to-container-copy-demo directory. When complete, Docker will use this DockerFile to run all the commands necessary to build a new Docker image on top of any base image.

The DockerFile below contains various steps/instructions that will build the new container:

4. Verify all of the required files to build the new image by running the tree command. You should see Dockerfile, myfile1.txt, and myfile2.txt under the

You’ll see below that you’re now in the Docker container’s Bash shell.

8. Next, verify if files were successfully copied on the container in the directories /tmp and /usr/share by running the ls command.

Mounting a Storage Volume and Accessing Files with the Docker Volume Command

Up to now, you have learned how to copy files from host to container using two different approaches by using the docker cp command and a DockerFile. This time, let’s learn how to easily share file systems between host and containers using the docker volume command.

Assuming you are still logged into the terminal:

2. Verify the volume has successfully been created by running the docker volume ls command. docker volume ls command lists the volume. After running the docker volume ls command, you will see my-vol in the VOLUME NAME attribute that confirms that volume is created successfully.

3. Next, run the container using the docker run command.

4. Verify if the volume my-vol you created previously is mounted properly with the container using the docker inspect command. Docker inspect command provides the information of the container. After running the docker inspect command, it will display all the details of the specified container ( volume_testing ) details, including the mount details, as shown below.

Below, the Image snapshot confirms that the volume ( my-vol ) you created on the host is successfully mounted with the container’s /app directory.

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Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned different ways of copying files or folders from Docker host to containers, such as using Docker cp command, Docker volume commands, and Dockerfile.

So which approach are you going to use next while copying data from the host to Docker containers?

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Copying Files to and from Docker Containers

While working on a Docker project, you might require copying files to and from Docker Containers and your Local Machine. Once you have built the Docker Image with a particular Docker build context, building it again and again just to add small files or folders inside the Container might be expensive because usually, Docker Images are of very large sizes.

Docker provides us with very helpful copy commands which allow us to seamless copy files to and from Docker Containers and Local Systems. In this article, we will discuss how to use the Docker cp commands using practical examples.

Copying files from Docker Container to Local Machine

Follow the below steps to copy a file from a docker container to a local machine:

Step 1: Create a Docker Container.

Creating a Container

Step 2: Create a File inside Container

Step 3: Get the Container ID

Copying Container ID

Step 4: Copy the file to your Local System

You can use the docker cp command to copy the file.

The first path (Source) is the path in the Docker Container and the second one is the path inside your Local System (Destination).

Copying files from Local System to Docker Container

Follow the below steps to copy files from a local machine to the Docker container:

Step 1: Create a file on your local machine

Step 2: Copy the File to the Container

You can use cp instruction. The path on the left should be on the local machine (Source) and on the right should be of Docker Container (Destination).

Step 3: Verify the copied file

To start the Container, use the following command.

How to copy files from local machine to docker container on windows

I have to import data files from a user local file C:/users/saad/bdd to a docker container (cassandra), I didn’t find how to proceed using docker commands. I’m working on windows 7.

9 Answers 9

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If you don’t know what’s the name of the container, you can find it using:

When using docker toolbox, there seems to be another issue related to absolute paths.

I am communicating with the containers using the «Docker Quickstart Teminal» which essentially is a MINGW64 environment.

If I try to copy a file with an absolute path to a container, I receive the error message.

If I use a relative path, it simply works.

P.S.: I am posting this as an answer because of missing reputation for a comment.

If you are using docker-toolbox on windows, use the following syntax

docker cp /C/Users/Saad/bdd-restaurants cassandra:/var/lib/docker/containers

It is not as straight-forward when using docker toolbox. Because docker toolbox has only access to C:\Users\ folder and there is a Oracle Virtual Box Manager in between, when you do get to copy the folder it is not directly copied to the container but instead to a mounted volume handle by Oracle VM machine. Like so:

How I got around this is just editing my DockerFile:

How to copy file from host to container using Dockerfile

I have written a Dockerfile which looks like this

Now I’m having a file called abc.txt in my host machine. How can I copy it to this container. Is there any step that I can add in Dockerfile which copy from Host to Container.

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Use COPY command like this:

read more details for COPY in the official documentation

An alternative would be to use ADD but this is not the best practise if you dont want to use some advanced features of ADD like decompression of tar.gz files.If you still want to use ADD command, do it like this:

read more details for ADD in the official documentation

For those who get this (terribly unclear) error:

COPY failed: stat /var/lib/docker/tmp/docker-builderXXXXXXX/abc.txt: no such file or directory

There could be loads of reasons, including:

I faced this issue, I was not able to copy zeppelin [1GB] directory into docker container and was getting issue

COPY failed: stat /var/lib/docker/tmp/docker-builder977188321/zeppelin-0.7.2-bin-all: no such file or directory

I am using docker Version: 17.09.0-ce and resolved the issue with the following steps.

Step 1: copy zeppelin directory [which i want to copy into docker package]into directory contain «Dockfile»

Step 3: go to directory which contain DockFile and run command [alternatives also available] docker build

Step 4: docker image created Successfully with logs

I got the following error using Docker 19.03.8 on CentOS 7:

I was able to copy a file from my host to the container within a dockerfile as such:

The contents of the docker file as follows,to copy a file from local host to the root of the container: FROM ubuntu:16.04

Copying files/folders from host to Docker container & docker container to host

To copy files or folders from host to docker container or docker container to host we can use docker cp command.

Table of Contents

docker cp

docker copy command docker cp is used to Copy files or folders between a docker container and the local host filesystem

We have to pass docker container id, source and destination path arguments to docker cp command.

In Docker versions prior to 1.8 it was only possible to copy files from a docker container to the host. Not from the host to a docker container.

Copy files from host to docker container

To copy a file from host to docker container the below steps.

Now copy the file from host to container.

Copy files from docker container to host

Similarly by using docker container id,we can copy files from docker container to host as well.

Copy a folder from host to docker container

docker cp command can be used to copy an entire folder from host to docker container and vice versa.

Copy a folder from docker container to host

To copy a folder from docker container to host use the below docker cp command.

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