docker attach will let you connect to your Docker container, but this isn't really the same thing as ssh. If your container is running a webserver, for example, docker attach will probably connect you to the stdout of the web server process. It won't necessarily give you a shell. The docker exec command is probably what you are looking for; this will let you run arbitrary commands inside an existing container. For example, to run bash inside a container: docker exec -it sh Of course, whatever command you are running must exist in the container filesystem; if your container doesn't have sh, this will fail with something like: OCI runtime exec failed: exec failed: unable to start container process: exec: "sh": executable file not found in $PATH: unknown [If your container doesn't have sh -- which is a common case for minimal images -- you may need to investigate other ways to explore the container filesystem.] In the above command is the name or ID of the target container. It doesn't matter whether or not you're using docker compose; just run docker ps and use either the ID (a hexadecimal string displayed in the first column) or the name (displayed in the final column). E.g., given: $ docker ps d2d4a89aaee9 larsks/mini-httpd "mini_httpd -d /cont 7 days ago Up 7 days web I can run: $ docker exec -it web ip addr 1: lo: mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 18: eth0: mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP link/ether 02:42:ac:11:00:03 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 172.17.0.3/16 scope global eth0 valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever inet6 fe80::42:acff:fe11:3/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever I could accomplish the same thing by running: $ docker exec -it d2d4a89aaee9 ip addr Similarly, I could start a shell in the container; $ docker exec -it web sh / # echo This is inside the container. This is inside the container. / # exit $ In commands shown in this answer, the -i and -t options (combined as -it) are necessary to get an interactive shell: -i keeps stdin connected; if you don't specify -i, the shell will simply exit. -t allocates a tty device; if you don't specify -t, you won't have a very pleasant interactive experience (there will be no shell prompt or job control, for example). If you're specifically using docker compose, there is a convenience docker compose exec command that works very much like the docker exec command, except: It defaults to the behavior of -i and -t It allows you to refer to containers by their service name in your compose.yaml file. For example, if you have a compose.yaml like this: services: web: image: docker.io/alpinelinux/darkhttpd Then you can run: docker compose exec web sh The equivalent docker exec command would be something like: docker exec -it myproject-web-1 sh Page 2 I'm getting started working with Docker. I'm using the WordPress base image and docker-compose. I'm trying to ssh into one of the containers to inspect the files/directories that were created during the initial build. I tried to run docker-compose run containername ls -la, but that didn't do anything. Even if it did, I'd rather have a console where I can traverse the directory structure, rather than run a single command. What is the right way to do this with Docker? 7