Is it feasible to control Docker from inside a container?
This is totally OK, and you're not the only one to do it :-)
Another example of use is to use the management container to hande authentication for the Docker REST API. It would accept connections on an EXPOSE'd TCP port, itself published with -p, and proxy requests to the UNIX socket.
As this question is still of relevance today, I want to answer with a bit more detail:
It is possible to work with this setup, where you pass the docker socket into a running container. This is done by many solutions and works well. BUT you have to think about the problems, that come with this:
- If you want to use the socket, you have to be root inside the container. This allows the execution of any command inside the container. So for example if an intruder controlls this container, he controls all other docker containers.
- If you expose the socket with a TCP Port as sugested by jpetzzo, you will have the same problem even worse, because now you won't even have to compromise the container but just the network. If you filter the connections (like sugested in his comment) the first problem stays.
TLDR;
You could do this and it will work, but then you have to think about security for a bit.