I've found starting docker containers using something like systemd works really well. Basically you do something like this:

  # systemd unit file
  Description=My Service
  After=docker.service
  Requires=docker.service

  [Service]
  ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run username/app

Notice I'm not using the '-d' flag in the docker run command. That forces all output to stdout/stderr, which will be routed to the systemd journal. Sadly this only works for apps that can log to the console instead of files.

More examples here:

https://coreos.com/docs/launching-containers/launching/getti...