Terminate Running Docker Container

When a currently running Docker container becomes unresponsive and cannot be stopped, it can be terminated immediately by sending the SIGKILL signal. This tutorial demonstrates how to terminate a running Docker container.

Terminate container

To terminate a running container by its ID or name, use docker kill command or docker container command with kill argument. For example, to terminate a container named redis, you can use:

docker kill redis

docker container kill redis

Terminate multiple containers

There is a way to terminate multiple containers at a time by specifying ID or name of the containers.

docker kill redis nginx

docker container kill redis nginx

Terminate container with different signal

By default, the SIGKILL signal is sent to terminate a running container. The --signal or -s option can be used to specify a signal that is sent to the container.

docker kill -s SIGINT redis

docker container kill -s SIGINT redis