Docker Container Kill

This command will kill one or more running containers. It kills the process abruptly inside the container. One might confuse this with docker stop. But docker stop just stops the processes inside the container while docker kill command will kill the process itself.

Syntax

docker kill [OPTIONS] CONTAINER [CONTAINER...]

Options

--signal, s: Signal to send to the container

Examples

The following example sends the default KILL signal to the container

docker kill my_container

learning-ocean:~ gaurav$ docker container run -itd nginx
89d34da28b5d4a4e15a6262cb6414106527a377eeeebdcf7aa4a7e8ef766260b
learning-ocean:~ gaurav$ docker container ls
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE     COMMAND                  CREATED         STATUS         PORTS                     NAMES
89d34da28b5d   nginx     "/docker-entrypoint.…"   5 seconds ago   Up 4 seconds   80/tcp                    happy_cori

let kill the container using below command

learning-ocean:~ gaurav$ docker container kill 89
89
learning-ocean:~ gaurav$

Be careful while running this command as it may cause severe issues if executed in a prod environment by mistake.