docker system events

Description

Use docker events to get real-time events from the server. These events differ per Docker object type. Different event types have different scopes. Local scoped events are only seen on the node they take place on, and Swarm scoped events are seen on all managers.

Only the last 256 log events are returned. You can use filters to further limit the number of events returned.

Object types

Containers

Docker containers report the following events:

• attach
• commit
• copy
• create
• destroy
• detach
• die
• exec_create
• exec_detach
• exec_die
• exec_start
• export
• health_status
• kill
• oom
• pause
• rename
• resize
• restart
• start
• stop
• top
• unpause
• update

Images

Docker images report the following events:

• delete
• import
• load
• pull
• push
• save
• tag
• untag

Plugins

Docker plugins report the following events:

• enable
• disable
• install
• remove

Volumes

Docker volumes report the following events:

• create
• destroy
• mount
• unmount

Networks

Docker networks report the following events:

• create
• connect
• destroy
• disconnect
• remove

Daemons

Docker daemons report the following events:

• reload

Services

Docker services report the following events:

• create
• remove
• update

Nodes

Docker nodes report the following events:

• create
• remove
• update

Secrets

Docker secrets report the following events:

• create
• remove
• update

Configs

Docker configs report the following events:

• create
• remove
• update

Limiting, filtering, and formatting the output

Limit events by time (--since, --until)

The --since and --until parameters can be Unix timestamps, date formatted timestamps, or Go duration strings supported by ParseDuration (e.g. 10m, 1h30m) computed relative to the client machine’s time. If you do not provide the --since option, the command returns only new and/or live events. Supported formats for date formatted time stamps include RFC3339Nano, RFC3339, 2006-01-02T15:04:05, 2006-01-02T15:04:05.999999999, 2006-01-02T07:00, and 2006-01-02. The local timezone on the client will be used if you do not provide either a Z or a +-00:00 timezone offset at the end of the timestamp. When providing Unix timestamps enter seconds[.nanoseconds], where seconds is the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 (midnight UTC/GMT), not counting leap seconds (aka Unix epoch or Unix time), and the optional .nanoseconds field is a fraction of a second no more than nine digits long.

Only the last 256 log events are returned. You can use filters to further limit the number of events returned.

Filtering (--filter)

The filtering flag (-f or --filter) format is of "key=value". If you would like to use multiple filters, pass multiple flags (e.g., --filter "foo=bar" --filter "bif=baz")

Using the same filter multiple times is interpreted as a logical OR; for example, --filter container=588a23dac085 --filter container=a8f7720b8c22 displays events for container 588a23dac085 or container a8f7720b8c22.

Using multiple filters is interpreted as a logical AND; for example, --filter container=588a23dac085 --filter event=start displays events for container 588a23dac085 and where the event type is start.

The currently supported filters are:

• config (config=<name or id>)
• container (container=<name or id>)
• daemon (daemon=<name or id>)
• event (event=<event action>)
• image (image=<repository or tag>)
• label (label=<key> or label=<key>=<value>)
• network (network=<name or id>)
• node (node=<id>)
• plugin (plugin=<name or id>)
• scope (scope=<local or swarm>)
• secret (secret=<name or id>)
• service (service=<name or id>)
• type (type=<container or image or volume or network or daemon or plugin or service or node or secret or config>)
• volume (volume=<name>)

Format the output (--format)

If you specify a format (--format), the given template is executed instead of the default format. Go's text/template package describes all the details of the format.

If a format is set to {{json .}}, events are streamed in the JSON Lines format. For information about JSON Lines, see https://jsonlines.org/.

Options

Examples

Basic example

You'll need two shells for this example.

Shell 1: Listening for events:

Shell 2: Start and Stop containers:

Shell 1: (Again .. now showing events):

To exit the docker events command, use CTRL+C.

Filter events by time

You can filter the output by an absolute timestamp or relative time on the host machine, using the following different time formats:

Filter events by criteria

The following commands show several different ways to filter the docker event output.

Format the output

Format as JSON

To list events in JSON format, use the json directive, which is the same --format '{{ json . }}.