Getting a Shell to a Seq Container

Sometimes you'll need to get direct access to a Seq container to make configuration changes or diagnostics.

Getting a shell to a new container

Use the shell command when starting a container to get a shell that can be used to run other server commands interactively:

docker run \
  -it \
  --rm \
  datalust/seq shell

This will open a bash shell in the container instead of attempting to start the Seq web server. You can then run Seq commands by calling seqsvr:

seqsvr show-key

The shell command can be especially useful if you've stopped your regular Seq container and can mount its /data volume in the temporary container:

docker run \
  -it \
  --rm \
  -v $SEQ_DATA:/data \
  -e ACCEPT_EULA=Y \
  datalust/seq shell

where $SEQ_DATA is the path to your regular Seq container's data volume.

Getting a shell to a running container

To get a shell to an already running Seq container, you can use docker exec:

docker exec \
  -it \
  $SEQ_CONTAINER \
  /bin/bash

where $SEQ_CONTAINER is the name or id of the container you'd like to attach a shell to.

Seq supports changes to configuration while it's running, but any changes won't be picked up by Seq until the container itself is restarted.

Using init scripts

Init Scripts can be used to run shell commands before Seq starts in environments where it's not possible to interact with the running container at all.