Posted On: Nov 2, 2017

Device and init flags can now be specified in task definitions for Docker containers managed by HAQM EC2 Container Service (HAQM ECS). 

The device flag enables containers to attach to external devices without using privileged mode. Previously, to mount a device to a Docker container required starting the container in privileged mode. Now, you can specify devices in the HAQM ECS task definition, allowing containers to mount devices such as EBS volumes.

The init flag runs an init process as PID 1 in the container. Previously, if certain containerized processes did not exit nicely, they could continue to run – incurring unneeded utilization and cost. Now, you can specify the Docker init parameter in the HAQM ECS task definition. This ensures the init process is the parent for all processes inside a container, and can terminate processes that have finished execution, but are still running.

For more information on using devices and init flags, see the HAQM ECS documentation. You can learn more about running Docker containers with HAQM ECS here

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