Docker Compose with one Terminating Container

Question

I'm having a docker compose setup of a database container, an application container and one container which pre-loads the database with necessary data.

I want to start all of the containers together with docker-compose up while the pre-loading container terminates after it has completed it work with exit 0.

But terminating this one container takes down the complete setup with the message:

composesetup_load_1 exited with code 0
Gracefully stopping... (press Ctrl+C again to force)
Stopping composesetup_app_1...
Stopping composesetup_db_1...

Is there any way of having multiple containers with different life-time in one docker-compose setup? If yes, how?

Answer 1

My workaround for now is to keep the pre-loading container running by adding tail -f /dev/null to the end of the entrypoint script. This keeps the process running, while nothing actual happens.

Answer 2

Using -d option at docker-compose up -d will run the process in detached mode. This avoids the need to kill the service with Ctrl+C and therefore stop the containers.

Note: I am asumming you killed the process with Ctrl+C from the message "Gracefully stopping... (press Ctrl+C again to force)" you shared.