Overview
The Containers tab is your Docker control plane on the connected VPS. It lists every container the agent can see (running and stopped), exposes lifecycle controls, and opens inspect, logs, stats, one-shot exec, and an interactive container terminal.
Open it from the panel sidebar under Containers. Actions run on the selected server through the Foster agent — you do not need SSH for day-to-day container ops.
Container list
The list mirrors docker ps / docker ps -a: name, image, state, status text,
published ports, and labels (including Compose project/service when present).
- Toggle between running-only and all containers.
- Use the row actions for start, stop, restart, inspect, logs, and terminal.
- Port mappings show host ↔ container bindings (IPv4 and IPv6 when both are published).
Start / stop / restart
Lifecycle controls map to Docker start, stop, and restart on the selected container ID. Stop/restart can pass a graceful timeout (default around 10 seconds) before Docker force-kills.
Inspect & environment
Inspect returns runtime detail: id, name, image, state, start time, mounts, networks, labels, command, restart policy, and related host config — without dumping secrets by default.
Environment variables are a separate, sensitive action. When account 2FA / step-up
is enabled, the panel may require re-confirmation before showing or editing KEY=value pairs.
Updating env
Docker cannot mutate Config.Env in place. Foster recreates the container with a merged env map
while preserving image, command, ports, mounts, networks, limits, and restart policy. Plan a short
interruption when changing env on a running workload.
Stats
Per-container (or all running) stats include CPU %, memory usage/limit, network and block I/O, and process count. When available you also get session CPU peak, configured CPU limit in cores, swap, and derived network rates between samples.
Logs
Stream or fetch container logs with optional tail length, timestamps, and a short follow window. Use export when you need a full download (all lines, timestamps on, follow off).
- Tail a recent window while debugging a crash loop.
- Enable follow for live output during deploys.
- Export when you need to attach logs to an incident or ticket.
Exec & terminal
One-shot exec
Run a non-interactive command inside the container (for example sh -c "ls -la /").
The response includes exit code and stdout — ideal for quick checks without opening a shell.
Interactive terminal
The container terminal is an interactive docker exec -it-style session (bash when available, otherwise sh).
You must confirm before the session opens.
- One live container console per agent at a time (opening a new one closes the previous).
- Absolute timeout defaults to 30 minutes; idle timeout is 5 minutes.
- Terminal size can be resized; input chunks are capped for safety.
Prune
System prune can reclaim unused containers, dangling images, and networks. Volumes are opt-in — leave them off unless you intentionally want to delete unused volume data.