Working with Docker is really fun. As soon as you want to debug something, you try the old netstat or ps, and these commands don’t exist. You try apt-get install ps only to realise you’re not on the right distro for apt-get, and even when you get that command right, you can’t find ps. Then you remember to apt-get update then install, only to find again ps doesn’t exist. Gah!

For my own sanity, and the sanity of others, here are some hints to getting all the things working on these lets-not-ship-basic-debugging-tools-because-micro-operating-systems widgets:

apt-get update &&

  • apt-get install net-tools yields netstat
  • apt-get install procps yields ps
  • apt-get install iptables yields bacon[0]

Flavour the commands for your preferred distro, these are default debian/ubuntu

Hint: add --no-install-recommends to prevent added stuff being added. They should.. should only be recommendations, not requirements, so you should still get the same functionality

[0] What did you expect me to say? iptables?