How to save a Docker container state

The usual way is at least through a docker commit: that will freeze the state of your container into a new image.

Note: As commented by anchovylegend, this is not the best practice, and using a Dockerfile allows you to formally modeling the image content and ensure you can rebuild/reproduce its initial state.

You can then list that image locally with docker images, and run it again.

Example:

$ docker ps

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS              NAMES
c3f279d17e0a        ubuntu:12.04        /bin/bash           7 days ago          Up 25 hours                            desperate_dubinsky
197387f1b436        ubuntu:12.04        /bin/bash           7 days ago          Up 25 hours                            focused_hamilton

$ docker commit c3f279d17e0a  svendowideit/testimage:version3

f5283438590d

$ docker images

REPOSITORY                        TAG                 ID                  CREATED             SIZE
svendowideit/testimage            version3            f5283438590d        16 seconds ago      335.7 MB

After that, if you have deployed a registry server, you can push your image to said server.

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