Debugger

info

This feature is available v3+

Dockman allows you to attach a custom toolkit to any running container. This enables you to exec into and inspect containers even if they lack a shell (e.g., scratch or distroless images).

Functionally, this operates similarly to docker debug or cdebug.

Usage

To start debugging, specify a Debugger Image in your configuration.

• Custom Image: Dockman will pull and start up the debugger container and then drop into the target container.
• Default: If left empty, Dockman attempts to use the target container's native shell/tools.

Examples

You can use any Docker image as your debugging toolkit. Here are common use cases:

1. General Purpose Lightweight shells for basic file manipulation.

alpine:latest
# or
busybox

2. Network Troubleshooting Access to tools like tcpdump, dig, and nmap.

nicolaka/netshoot

3. Ad-hoc Toolkits (via Nixery) Don't want to build a custom image? Use Nixery to generate an image with specific tools on the fly.

# Creates an image containing bash, curl, vim and htop, no need to prebuild the image
nixery.dev/shell/curl/vim/htop

Credits

• Inspired by the work of Ivan Velichko (iximiuz).
• Based on the concepts behind cdebug.