What might cause your terminal to hang when starting a container with a NodeJS application?

When starting a container with a NodeJS application, the terminal hanging can often result from not providing the --interactive option during the docker run command.

In a typical situation, NodeJS applications might require standard input (stdin) to properly interact with the terminal or to receive input. When you run a container without the --interactive option, the terminal does not attach to the container's stdin, which can lead to the application appearing to hang or become unresponsive because it is waiting for input that it cannot receive. Therefore, including the --interactive flag is essential in creating a direct interface between your terminal and the application running within the container, allowing for proper input handling and interaction.

The other scenarios, while they may cause issues or unexpected behavior, do not specifically address the typical experience of a terminal hanging due to input handling. An infinite loop in the application could cause it to be unresponsive, but it would not affect the terminal’s ability to receive input; the state of the application itself would simply cause it to hang without further output. Forgetting to start the container after creating it would lead to a different error, as it would mean the container is not running at all, rather than causing the terminal to hang.