How do I run a docker instance from a DockerFile?

Download the file and from the same directory run docker build -t nodebb .

This will give you an image on your local machine that's named nodebb that you can launch an container from with docker run -d nodebb (you can change nodebb to your own name).

You cannot start a container from a Dockerfile.

The process goes like this:

Dockerfile =[docker build]=> Docker image =[docker run]=> Docker container

To start (or run) a container you need an image. To create an image you need to build the Dockerfile[1].

[1]: you can also docker import an image from a tarball or again docker load.

While other answers were usable, this really helped me, so I am putting it also here.

From the documentation:

Instead of specifying a context, you can pass a single Dockerfile inthe URL or pipe the file in via STDIN. To pipe a Dockerfile fromSTDIN:

$ docker build - < Dockerfile

With Powershell on Windows, you can run:

Get-Content Dockerfile | docker build -

When the build is done, run command:

docker image ls

You will see something like this:

REPOSITORY                 TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE<none>                     <none>              123456789        39 seconds ago      422MB

Copy your actual IMAGE ID and then run

docker run 123456789

Where the number at the end is the actual Image ID from previous step

If you do not want to remember the image id, you can tag your image by

docker tag 123456789 pavel/pavel-build

Which will tag your image as pavel/pavel-build