TL;DR Is it possible to get a shell to a container so I have access to binaries in the container?

 

I use SABnzbd to download stuff. And, as good as it is, I sometimes have to manually muck with the archives [unrar, par2, ...]. Previously with plugins, those utilities were installed natively on unRAID, so, I'd have access to them from any old shell. Now that SABnzbd is in a container, I can no longer run those tools from a shell.

 

That's what I get for posting without first searching ... found the answer

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39807.msg372757#msg372757

 

Hilariously, your post is now the top Google search result for 

shell inside docker container unraid

and the link you provided is dead.

Since I can't easily find another good reference, I'll just post the solution here (for Unraid 6.11.5):

1. Open a terminal on your Unraid Host (you can use the web terminal feature if you like)

2. Run 

docker ps

and note the ID of the container you wish to run.

3. Run

docker exec -it previously_noted_ID /bin/bash

(replace /bin/bash with a shell present in your container as necessary)

Or, more simply, just...

 

Click on the icon for the container, and select >_ Console

Fix for the broken link, (the UI doesn't say "shell" anymore, though)

 

Also, the OP was doing it wrong anyway

On 8/8/2015 at 10:05 AM, tkenn1s said:

sometimes have to manually muck with the archives

Those should be mapped to a host path.

Just to clarify ... I wasn't "doing it wrong".

 

I understand that the directories are mapped. That wasn't the issue. What I needed access to were the _tools_ [ie. par2, etc...]. Those aren't natively available on unraid, but are installed within the container.

Just to clarify the excellent solition provided by @trurl

The icons per container on the far left, show a dropdown menu when clicking it. A very low hanging usability fix is to communicate this hidden behaviour to the user by an "actions" or "..." dropdown to the far right.