A practical, field-tested reference guide for common Docker operations, system prunes, and multi-platform installations.

Container & System Operations

# Basic Container Lifecycle
docker start <container_id>
docker stop <container_id>
docker restart <container_id>

# Run Compose stack with specific environment file
docker-compose --env-file ./envs/dev.env up -d --build
docker-compose --env-file ./envs/dev.env down

Disk Cleanup & Pruning

# Remove stopped containers and unused images
docker system prune -f

# Remove all unused images (including untagged)
docker image prune -a -f

# Total cleanup including dangling volumes
docker system prune --volumes -f

Installing Docker Compose V2 Plugin

# Create CLI plugins directory
DOCKER_CONFIG=${DOCKER_CONFIG:-$HOME/.docker}
mkdir -p $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins

# Download binary release
curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.24.7/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins/docker-compose

# Make executable
chmod +x $DOCKER_CONFIG/cli-plugins/docker-compose

Quick Server Setup (Ubuntu / Amazon Linux 2)

# Ubuntu Docker Installation
sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install docker.io docker-compose -y
sudo service docker start
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER