CLI Machines Docker Inspect

ed machines docker inspect

Prints docker's own inspect output for a container, untouched.

ed machines docker inspect <machine> <container>

Arguments

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
<machine>	machine name, ssh alias, id, or any unambiguous prefix	required	Which machine to ask.
<container>	container name or id	required	What to inspect. Passed to docker inspect as given.

Options

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
--help, -h	flag	off	Print the help for this command on stdout and exit 0.

This command has no --json flag, because all of its output already is JSON: docker's array of one object, printed exactly as docker produced it, with docker's own key names and key order.

$ ed machines tuf docker inspect lobe-chat | head -8
[
    {
        "Id": "b556d7fef23e992287fe837df535b4dcfbdf2aaa48f90ee9f96fdc994ed5d79d",
        "Created": "2026-08-06T22:20:40.507261889Z",
        "Path": "/bin/node",
        "Args": [
            "/app/startServer.js"
        ],

Examples

ed machines tuf docker inspect lobe-chat
ed machines tuf docker inspect lobe-chat | jq -r '.[0].State.Status'
ed machines tuf docker inspect lobe-chat | jq -r '.[0].Config.Env[]'

Behaviour notes

The remote command is docker inspect <container> 2>/dev/null, with a 30 second ceiling. Because it is plain docker inspect, it answers for any docker object, so an image name, a volume or a network works here too even though the argument is called container.

The two failure paths are worth telling apart. When docker itself fails, which is what a missing container does, the non-zero status is reported and the command exits 1; docker's stderr was discarded by the 2>/dev/null, so the hint falls back to what landed on stdout, which for a missing object is []:

$ ed machines tuf docker inspect nosuch-container
error: docker inspect nosuch-container 2>/dev/null exited 1 on Asus TUF 7
hint: []

When docker succeeds but prints nothing at all, ed reports no container named <container> and exits 3.

Where to go next

• ed machines docker, the rest of this group
• All ed commands