--- title: "pause" description: "The pause command description and usage" keywords: "cgroups, container, suspend, SIGSTOP" --- <!-- This file is maintained within the docker/docker Github repository at https://github.com/docker/docker/. Make all pull requests against that repo. If you see this file in another repository, consider it read-only there, as it will periodically be overwritten by the definitive file. Pull requests which include edits to this file in other repositories will be rejected. --> # pause ```markdown Usage: docker pause CONTAINER [CONTAINER...] Pause all processes within one or more containers Options: --help Print usage ``` The `docker pause` command suspends all processes in the specified containers. On Linux, this uses the cgroups freezer. Traditionally, when suspending a process the `SIGSTOP` signal is used, which is observable by the process being suspended. With the cgroups freezer the process is unaware, and unable to capture, that it is being suspended, and subsequently resumed. On Windows, only Hyper-V containers can be paused. See the [cgroups freezer documentation](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroup-v1/freezer-subsystem.txt) for further details. ## Related information * [unpause](unpause.md)