Starting and stopping containers is done via docker-compose. If you have never worked with it before, have a look at their documentation for an [overview](https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/overview/), [up](https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/up/) and [stop](https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/stop/) commands.
The normal start will bring up **all** container defined in *docker-compose.yml* and will stay in forground making it possible to stop them via Ctrl+c.
Instead of having the docker-compose run stay in foreground, you can also send it to the background by adding `-d` as an argument. The following will bring up **all** container and send docker-compose to background.
There is no need to always bring up **all** container, if you just need a few at the moment. In order to do so, simply specify the container by name that you actually need.
**Note:** `httpd`, `php` and `bind` are base container that will **always** be started if specified or not. (Defined by `depends_on` in `docker-compose.yml`). So the above could also be achieved by simply specifying `mysql` only.
**Note:** `httpd`, `php` and `bind` are base container that will **always** be started if specified or not. (Defined by `depends_on` in `docker-compose.yml`). So the above could also be achieved by simply specifying `pgsql` and `redis` only.
1. If you started up docker compose in foreground mode (without `-d`), you can hit `ctrl+c` to gracefull stop or **twice**`ctrl+c` to kill the running containers.<br/>**Note:** Automatically started containers that were not specified (such as `http` or `php`) will have to be stopped manually via `docker-compose down` afterwards.
2. If you started up docker compose in background mode (with `-d`), go back to the devilbox directory (where the `docker-compose.yml` file resides and type `docker-compose down` to gracefully stop or `docker-compose kill` to kill them immediately.
Best pracice would be to start the container in the background (with `-d`) and use `docker compose down` to gracefully stop all of them.
You can also stop specific containers during runtime if they are not needed anymore. You might have started httpd, php, bind, mysql and redis and decided that redis was not needed. So go ahead and remove redis from the running container stack.
This section is about how to start, stop, view and enter (all or a selection of some) containers. If you want to know how to choose the container type version (e.g. which mysql version or which php version) refer to the **[Configuration](Configuration.md)** section.
**Convention:** The terms *container* and *service* are used interchangeably.
**Assumption:** All `docker-compose` commands must be executed within the devilbox root directory, where the `docker-compose.yml` file resides.
Services started in background mode (`-d`) or those that were started as dependencies (`http` and `php`) will always only log to docker logs and not to stdout/stderr. In order to view their output use:
```shell
$ docker-compose logs
```
### 3. Enter
#### 3.1 Enter the php container
The `php` container (which might also have hhvm installed, depending on your version choice) is the container you can use to enter if you want to execute commands with the specified php version.
> **Note:** If you also have php installed locally on your host machine (and it is the php version of your choice), there is no need to enter the php container, just execute all the required commands on your project dir.
