How to see docker image layers when image tag is not present

Question

I was trying various options of "docker image history" command to see the image layers used to build the image on my local machine.

There is a nginx image on my system which has no tags assigned. So "docker images" command lists the following images in my system.

I tried to find layer details for nginx image using following command :

docker image history nginx

But as the tag name is not specified, docker-cli considers it default "latest" tag which is not present on my system and I am getting following error :

Error response from daemon: No such image: nginx:latest

I tried the same command with "none" as tag but it also failed with following error :

docker image history nginx:none
Error response from daemon: No such image: nginx:none

Any suggestions ? How can we see layers of an images which does not have tag assigned.

Do you mean to use `docker tag nginx nginx:latest` to retag it? — Saeed, Apr 09 '21 at 20:09
The questions is not about tagging an image. It is on how to inspect image layers of an untagged image. — Gunjan Shah, Apr 13 '21 at 14:55
since the image lacks any tag, I recommended re-tag it. The error is with image having `none` tag is not found. — Saeed, Apr 13 '21 at 16:11

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 09 '21 at 16:43

1

Try using ID instead of name with tag.

Let say that I have this output of docker images

REPOSITORY TAG      IMAGE ID       CREATED      SIZE
postgres   <none>   1f0815c1cb6e   7 weeks ago  314M

I can use docker image history and specify the ID or part of it sufficient to identify the image in this context.

docker image history 1f0

answered Apr 09 '21 at 16:43

Michal Rosenbaum

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yes, it is working with id. But I was looking for some alternative solution in case I want to use image name. – Gunjan Shah Apr 09 '21 at 18:05

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 09 '21 at 17:03

1

docker history <your-docker-image-id>

In your case it is as follows:

docker history 7ce4f91ef623

answered Apr 09 '21 at 17:03

Ashok

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yes, it is working with id. But I was looking for some alternative solution in case I want to use image name. – Gunjan Shah Apr 09 '21 at 18:05

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 10 '21 at 01:52

I found --filter option for docker images command which we can use to find dangling/untagged images as below :

docker images -f "dangling=true" --quiet

We can use this command to list image layers for the untagged image as below :

docker image history  $(docker images -f "dangling=true" --quiet)

How to see docker image layers when image tag is not present

3 Answers3