Run executable from host within docker container

Question

I have a docker container and I would like to start a process in the host OS, and then have it execute in the context of the docker container. That is, my executable is a file in the host filesystem, and I want to start a process in the host OS, but I want to contain that process to the container, so that eg the process can only access the container's filesystem, etc.

For various reasons I do not want to copy the executable into the container and execute it there.

I do realize that this is a somewhat strange thing to be trying to do with docker containers!

Answer 1

Mount the executable into the container with a volume like this:

$ docker run -v /path/to/executable:/my_exe debian /my_exe

The only problem is you will also need to take care of making sure any required libraries are also available in the container.