In this blog post, we will discuss how to work with Docker images from the command line. Docker images are essential for running containers and encapsulating your applications in a portable and efficient manner.
To list all the images you have downloaded or installed, you can use the following command:
docker images -a
This command will provide you with a list of all the Docker images on your system, including their names, tags, sizes, and creation dates.
To remove an image, you can use the docker rmi command followed by the name of the image you want to remove. This command will delete the specified image from your system.
During testing and development, it is common to have dangling images, which are untagged images. These images can take up disk space and should be safely removed. You can identify them using the following command:
docker images -f dangling=true
This command will display a list of all the dangling images on your system.
To remove dangling images, you can use the command docker rmi $(docker images -f dangling=true -q). This command will remove only the dangling images that are not currently in use by any running containers.
It’s important to note that the docker system prune -a command is often used to remove images. However, this command will also delete images that are not referenced by any container, including those that you may want to keep for rolling back to previous versions of an image.
If you want to remove all images, including those referenced by containers, you can use the command docker rmi $(docker images -a -q). This command is useful when you want to clean everything and start fresh, especially during your initial tests and experiments with Docker.
By following these commands and guidelines, you can efficiently manage your Docker images from the command line, ensuring a clean and organized development environment.