page_title: Automatically Start Containers
page_description: How to generate scripts for upstart, systemd, etc.
page_keywords: systemd, upstart, supervisor, docker, documentation, host integration

# Automatically Start Containers

You can use your Docker containers with process managers like
`upstart`, `systemd` and
`supervisor`.

## Introduction

If you want a process manager to manage your containers you will need to
run the docker daemon with the `-r=false` so that
docker will not automatically restart your containers when the host is
restarted.

When you have finished setting up your image and are happy with your
running container, you can then attach a process manager to manage it.
When your run `docker start -a` docker will
automatically attach to the running container, or start it if needed and
forward all signals so that the process manager can detect when a
container stops and correctly restart it.

Here are a few sample scripts for systemd and upstart to integrate with
docker.

## Sample Upstart Script

In this example we’ve already created a container to run Redis with
`--name redis_server`. To create an upstart script
for our container, we create a file named
`/etc/init/redis.conf` and place the following into
it:

    description "Redis container"
    author "Me"
    start on filesystem and started docker
    stop on runlevel [!2345]
    respawn
    script
      /usr/bin/docker start -a redis_server
    end script

Next, we have to configure docker so that it’s run with the option
`-r=false`. Run the following command:

    $ sudo sh -c "echo 'DOCKER_OPTS=\"-r=false\"' > /etc/default/docker"

## Sample systemd Script

    [Unit]
    Description=Redis container
    Author=Me
    After=docker.service

    [Service]
    Restart=always
    ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker start -a redis_server
    ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop -t 2 redis_server

    [Install]
    WantedBy=local.target