DockerUI is a tool written by Michael Crosby, who at the time of writing this book worked for Docker. DockerUI is a simple way to view what is going on inside your Docker host.

This is a screenshot of the GitHub repository, where the code for DockerUI is kept. You can view the content yourself by visiting https://github.com/crosbymichael/dockerui.

This page will include screenshots of DockerUI in action as well as the current features of DockerUI that are available. You can create pull requests against the code if you have ideas you would like to see in DockerUI and would like to help contribute to the code. You can also submit issues that you might find with DockerUI.

The installation of DockerUI is very straightforward with you just running a simple Docker run command to get started:

$ docker run -d -p 9000:9000 --privileged -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock dockerui/dockerui

After you have run the previous command, you will be able to navigate to the DockerUI web interface. You should be able to easily break down the run command and see what it is doing and where you need to go to get to the dashboard. However, in case you are stumped, here is what the command is doing: it is running the DockerUI container on your Docker host and exposing port 9000 from the host to the container. So, simply launching a web browser and pointing to the IP address of the Docker host and then port 9000 will give you to a screen similar to the previous one. This is the DockerUI web dashboard.

This is another view of the dashboard shortly after you have launched the container and visited the web interface. You can see information such as what containers are currently running on your Docker host and what their statuses are; some could be stopped as well. It will also show you the containers that are created and a timeline for when the images were created.

At the top of the web interface, you will see a navigation bar. When you click on the Containers item, you will be brought to a page that provides you information on all the containers running on your host. You will see their name, the images used to run the containers, what command is being executed inside each container, when they were created, and their statuses. You can take actions against these containers from here as well. These actions are start, stop, restart, kill, pause, unpause, and remove.

Next up in the navigation bar is Images. Again, like Containers, you can get all the information on all the images being used on your Docker host here. Information such as their IDs, what repositories they are from, their virtual sizes, and when they were created will be displayed here. Again, you can take some actions on your images. But for images, the only option you have is to remove them from your Docker host.

The last item in the navigation menu is Info. The Info section gives you a general overview of your Docker host, such as what Docker version it is running and how many containers and images are there. It also provides system information on the hardware that is available.