9.13 Invoking guix container

Note: As of version 1.3.0.8543-039c3-dirty, this tool is experimental. The interface is subject to radical change in the future.

The purpose of guix container is to manipulate processes running within an isolated environment, commonly known as a “container”, typically created by the guix shell (see Invoking guix shell) and guix system container (see Invoking guix system) commands.

The general syntax is:

guix container action options…

action specifies the operation to perform with a container, and options specifies the context-specific arguments for the action.

The following actions are available:

exec

Execute a command within the context of a running container.

The syntax is:

guix container exec pid program arguments…

pid specifies the process ID of the running container. program specifies an executable file name within the root file system of the container. arguments are the additional options that will be passed to program.

The following command launches an interactive login shell inside a Guix system container, started by guix system container, and whose process ID is 9001:

guix container exec 9001 /run/current-system/profile/bin/bash --login

Note that the pid cannot be the parent process of a container. It must be PID 1 of the container or one of its child processes.