Docker is in volume in use but there aren t any Docker containers

Question

EDIT  2 19 21   A lot of time has elapsed since I asked this original question years ago and I ve seen a flurry of activity since then  I re-selected an answer which I think is consistent with the most localized and safe option for solving this issue  which is typically associated with docker-compose   While docker did introduce the prune command  it is generally a dangerous operation and I would be cautious about using it as you may unintentionally impact other applications or setups you have on your machine  I ve been having issues with removing Docker volumes with Docker 1 9 1  I ve removed all my stopped containers so that docker ps -a returns empty  When I use docker volume ls  I m given a whole host of Docker containers  docker volume ls DRIVER              VOLUME NAME local               a94211ea91d66142886d72ec476ece477bb5d2e7e52a5d73b2f2f98f6efa6e66 local               4f673316d690ca2d41abbdc9bf980c7a3f8d67242d76562bbd44079f5f438317 local               eb6ab93effc4b90a2162e6fab6eeeb65bd0e4bd8a9290e1bad503d2a47aa8a78 local               91acb0f7644aec16d23a70f63f70027899017a884dab1f33ac8c4cf0dabe5f2c local               4932e2fbad8f7e6246af96208d45a266eae11329f1adf176955f80ca2e874f69 local               68fd38fc78a8f02364a94934e9dd3b5d10e51de5b2546e7497eb21d6a1e7b750 local               7043a9642614dd6e9ca013cdf662451d2b3df6b1dddff97211a65ccf9f4c6d47  etc x 50  Since none of these volumes contain anything important  I try to purge all the volumes with docker volume rm   docker volume ls -q   In the process  the majority are removed  but I get back  Error response from daemon  Conflict  volume is in use Error response from daemon  Conflict  volume is in use Error response from daemon  Conflict  volume is in use Error response from daemon  Conflict  volume is in use Error response from daemon  Conflict  volume is in use  For a sizeable portion of them  If I don t have any containers existing in the first place  how are these volumes being used

User · Accepted Answer

Perhaps the volume was created via docker-compose  If so  it should get removed by   docker-compose down --volumes     Credit to Niels Bech Nielsen

User · Answer

I am pretty sure that those volumes are actually mounted on your system  Look in  proc mounts and you will see them there  You will likely need to sudo umount  lt path gt  or sudo umount -f -n  lt path gt   You should be able to get the mounted path either in  proc mounts or through docker volume inspect

User · Answer

You should type this command with flag -f  force    sudo docker volume rm -f  lt VOLUME NAME gt

User · Answer

I am fairly new to Docker  I was cleaning up some initial testing mess and was not able to remove a volume either  I had stopped all the running instances  performed a docker rmi -f   docker image ls -q   but still received the Error response from daemon  unable to remove volume  remove uuid  volume is in use   I did a docker system prune and it cleaned up what was needed to remove the last volume    0   docker system prune WARNING  This will remove  - all stopped containers - all networks not used by at least one container - all dangling images - all build cache Are you sure you want to continue   y N  y Deleted Containers      about 15 containers UUID s truncated  Total reclaimed space  2 273MB  0   docker volume ls DRIVER              VOLUME NAME local              uuid  0   docker volume rm uuid uuid  0     docker system prune     The client and daemon API must both be at least 1 25 to use this command  Use   the docker version command on the client to check your client and daemon API versions

User · Answer

Volume can be in use by one of stopped containers  You can remove such containers by command   docker container prune   then you can remove not used volumes   docker volume prune

User · Answer

As long as volumes are associated with a container either running or not   they cannot be removed   You have to run   docker inspect  lt container-id gt   lt container-name gt    on each of the running non-running containers where this volume might have been mounted onto    If the volume is mounted onto any one of the containers  you should see it in the Mounts section of the inspect command output  Something like this  -   Mounts                                    Type    volume                    Name    user1                    Source     var lib docker volumes user1  data                    Destination     opt                    Driver    local                    Mode                        RW   true                   Propagation                                 After figuring out the responsible container s   use  -  docker rm -f container-1 container-2    container-n in case of running containers  docker rm container-1 container-2    container-n in case of non-running containers  to completely remove the containers from the host machine   Then try removing the volume using the  command  -  docker volume remove  lt volume-name volume-id gt

User · Answer

Currently you can use what docker offers now for a general and more complete cleaning   docker system prune   To additionally remove any stopped containers and all unused images  not just dangling images   add the -a flag to the command   docker system prune -a

User · Answer

You can use these functions to brutally remove everything Docker related   removecontainers         docker stop   docker ps -aq      docker rm   docker ps -aq     armageddon         removecontainers     docker network prune -f     docker rmi -f   docker images --filter dangling true -qa      docker volume rm   docker volume ls --filter dangling true -q      docker rmi -f   docker images -qa      You can add those to your   Xrc file  where X is your shell interpreter     bashrc if you re using bash  file and reload them via executing source   Xrc  Also  you can just copy paste them to the console and afterwards  regardless the option you took before to get the functions ready  just run   armageddon   It s also useful for just general Docker clean up  Have in mind that this will also remove your images  not only your containers  either running or not  and your volumes of any kind

User · Answer

A one liner to give you just the needed details  docker inspect  docker ps -aq    jq         Name   Name  Mounts   Mounts     less  search for the volume of complaint  you have the container name as well

[docker] Docker is in volume in use, but there aren't any Docker containers

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