Mount Docker container contents in host file system

Take a look at docker export.

To quickly list the files in your container:

docker export CONTAINER|tar -t

To export:

docker export CONTAINER>snapshot.tar
docker export CONTAINER|tar x PATH-IN-CONTAINER

Or to look at a file:

docker export CONTAINER|tar x --to-stdout PATH-IN-CONTAINER
# e.g. 
docker export consul|tar x --to-stdout etc/profile

Docker 1.8 supports cp:

https://docs.docker.com/reference/commandline/cp/

Usage:  docker cp [options] CONTAINER:PATH LOCALPATH|-
        docker cp [options] LOCALPATH|- CONTAINER:PATH

update: you should ssh to your docker machine when you run this.

You can use docker commit to persist the current state of your container in a new image, and start an interactive container from this image to inspect the contents.

From the documentation :

It can be useful to commit a container’s file changes or settings into a new image. This allows you debug a container by running an interactive shell, or to export a working dataset to another server.

Hope this helps.