Restart a service in a docker container

Question

I have a docker container that runs nginx on debian. In response to some input, I need to restart the nginx service but not the whole container. Running "service nginx restart" blows the whole container away.

Is there any way to restart a service in a docker container without restarting the whole container?

Answer 1

You can go inside the container and restart the nginx

sudo docker exec –it nginx-container /bin/bash

Answer 2

Of course it's recommended to rebuild the container when you do the changes, but I recommend reload ing the nginx service with either running bash inside of container and then reload it:

sudo docker exec -it NGINX_NAME bash

Then run service nginx reload .

Or:

sudo docker exec -it NGINX_NAME service nginx reload