Docker - Cannot remove dead container

Question

I am unable to remove the dead container  it appears again after i restart the Docker service   docker ps -a CONTAINER ID         STATUS           11667ef16239         Dead   Then  docker rm -f 11667ef16239   Then  when I ran the docker ps -a  no docker containers showing     docker ps -a CONTAINER ID         STATUS   However  when I restart the docker service   service docker restart   And run the docker ps -a again   docker ps -a CONTAINER ID         STATUS           11667ef16239         Dead

User · Answer

I have tried the suggestions above but didn't work.

Then

I try : docker system prune -a, it didn't work the first time
I reboot the system
I try again docker system prune -a. This time it works. It will send a warning message and in the end ask "Are you sure you want to continue? y/n? . Ans:y . It will time a time and in the end the dead containers are gone.
Verify with docker ps -a

IMPORTANT - this is the nuclear option as it destroys all containers + images

User · Answer

Running on Centos7  amp  Docker 1 8 2  I was unable to use Zgr3doo s solution to umount by devicemapper   I think the response I got was that the volume wasn t mounted found     I think I also had a similar thing happen with sk8terboi87    s answer  I believe the message was that the volumes couldn t be unmounted  and it listed the specific volumes that it tried to umount in order to delete the dead containers   What did work for me was stopping docker first  and then deleting the directories manually  I was able to determine which ones they were by the error output of previous command to delete all the dead containers   Apologies for the vague descriptions above  I found this SO question days after I handled the dead containers     However  I noticed a similar pattern today     sudo docker stop fervent fermi  sudo docker rm fervent fermi fervent fermi Error response from daemon  Cannot destroy container fervent fermi  Driver devicemapper failed to remove root filesystem a11bae452da3dd776354aae311da5be5ff70ac9ebf33d33b66a24c62c3ec7f35  Device is Busy Error  failed to remove containers   fervent fermi     sudo systemctl docker stop   sudo rm -rf  var lib docker devicemapper mnt a11bae452da3dd776354aae311da5be5ff70ac9ebf33d33b66a24c62c3ec7f35     I did notice  when using this approach that docker re-created the images with different names   a11bae452da3     trend av docker    bash    2 weeks ago    Dead    compassionate ardinghelli   This may have been due to the container being issued with restart always  however  the container ID matches the ID of the container that previously used the volume that I force-deleted  There were no difficulties deleting this new container     sudo docker rm -v compassionate ardinghelli compassionate ardinghelli

User · Answer

I got the same issue and both answers did not help   What helped for me is just creating the directories that are missing and them remove them   mkdir  var lib docker devicemapper mnt 656cfd09aee399c8ae8c8d3e735fe48d70be6672773616e15579c8de18e2a3b3 mkdir  var lib docker devicemapper mnt 656cfd09aee399c8ae8c8d3e735fe48d70be6672773616e15579c8de18e2a3b3-init docker rm 656cfd09aee399c8ae8c8d3e735fe48d70be6672773616e15579c8de18e2a3b3

User · Answer

You can also remove dead containers with this command  docker rm   docker ps --all -q -f status dead    But  I m really not sure why  amp  how the dead containers are created  This error seems related https   github com typesafehub mesos-spark-integration-tests issues 34 whenever i get dead containers   Update  With Docker 1 13 update  we can easily remove both unwanted containers  dangling images    docker system df  will show used space  similar to the unix tool df   docker system prune   will remove all unused data

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There are a lot of answers in here but none of them involved the  quick  solution that worked for me   I m using Docker version 1 12 3  build 6b644ec   I simply ran docker rmi  lt image-name gt  for the image from whence the dead container came  A docker ps -a then showed the dead container missing completely   Then  of course  I just re-pulled the image and ran the container again   I have no idea how it found itself in this state but so it is

User · Answer

Try this it worked for me   docker rm -f  lt container name gt   eg  docker rm -f 11667ef16239

User · Answer

Most likely  an error occurred when the daemon attempted to cleanup the container  and he is now stuck in this  zombie  state   I m afraid your only option here is to manually clean it up     sudo rm -rf  var lib docker  lt storage driver gt  11667ef16239       Where  lt storage driver gt  is the name of your driver  aufs  overlay  btrfs  or devicemapper

User · Answer

For Deleting all dead container  docker rm  -f   docker ps --all -q -f status dead  For deleting all exited container docker rm  -f   docker ps --all -q -f status exited    As I have -f is necessary

User · Answer

grep 656cfd09aee399c8ae8c8d3e735fe48d70be6672773616e15579c8de18e2a3b3  proc   mountinfo   then find the pid of 656cfd09aee399c8ae8c8d3e735fe48d70be6672773616e15579c8de18e2a3b3and and kill it

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Try  It worked for me     docker ps -a CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES 4f13b53be9dd        5b0bbf1173ea          opt app netjet       5 months ago        Dead                                    appname chess    docker rm   docker ps --all -q -f status dead  Error response from daemon  driver  devicemapper  failed to remove root filesystem for 4f13b53be9ddef3e9ba281546aef1c544805282971f324291a1dc91b50eeb440  failed to remove device 487b4b73c58d19ef79201cf6d5fcd6b7316e612e99c14505a6bf24399cad9795-init  devicemapper  Error running DeleteDevice dm task run failed  su cd  var lib docker containers  root localhost containers    ls -l total 0 drwx------  1 root root 312 Nov 17 08 58 4f13b53be9ddef3e9ba281546aef1c544805282971f324291a1dc91b50eeb440  root localhost containers   rm -rf 4f13b53be9ddef3e9ba281546aef1c544805282971f324291a1dc91b50eeb440 systemctl restart docker

User · Answer

The best way to get rid of dead container processes is to restart your docker service  I was unable to remove a container as it was stuck in restarting status  I just restarted the docker service and it worked for me

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Try this it worked for me on centos 1  docker container ls -a gives you a list of containers check status which you want to get rid of  2  docker container rm -f 97af2da41b2b not a big fan force flag but does the work to check it worked just fire the command again or list it   3  continue till we clear all dead containers

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Try running the following commands  It always works for me      docker volume rm   docker volume ls -qf dangling true    docker rm   docker ps -q -f  status exited     After execution of the above commands  restart docker by     service docker restart

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Removing container by force worked for me    docker rm -f  lt id of the dead container gt   Notes   Be aware that this command might throw this error  Error response from daemon  Driver devicemapper failed to remove root filesystem  lt id of the dead container gt   Device is Busy  The mount of your s dead container device mapper should be removed despite this message  That is  you will no longer access this path    var lib docker devicemapper mnt  lt id of the dead container gt

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Tried all of the above  short of reboot  restart docker     So here is the error om docker rm     docker rm 08d51aad0e74 Error response from daemon  driver  devicemapper  failed to remove root filesystem for 08d51aad0e74060f54bba36268386fe991eff74570e7ee29b7c4d74047d809aa  remove  var lib docker devicemapper mnt 670cdbd30a3627ae4801044d32a423284b540c5057002dd010186c69b6cc7eea  device or resource busy   Then I did a the following      grep docker  proc   mountinfo   grep 958722d105f8586978361409c9d70aff17c0af3a1970cb3c2fb7908fe5a310ac  proc 20416 mountinfo 629 574 253 15    var lib docker devicemapper mnt 958722d105f8586978361409c9d70aff17c0af3a1970cb3c2fb7908fe5a310ac rw relatime shared 288 - xfs  dev mapper docker-253 5-786536-958722d105f8586978361409c9d70aff17c0af3a1970cb3c2fb7908fe5a310ac rw nouuid attr2 inode64 logbsize 64k sunit 128 swidth 128 noquota   This got be the PID of the offending process keeping it busy - 20416  the item after  proc   So I did a ps -p and to my surprise find    devops dp01app5030 SeGrid   ps -p 20416   PID TTY          TIME CMD 20416          00 00 19 ntpd   A true WTF moment   So I pair problem solved with Google and found this   Then found this https   github com docker for-linux issues 124   Turns out I had to restart ntp daemon and that fixed the issue

User · Answer

Try kill it and then remove     i e  docker kill   docker ps -q

User · Answer

In my case  I had to remove it with rm -r  var lib docker containers  lt container-id gt    and it worked  Maybe that s how you solve it in docker version  19  My docker version was 19 03 12

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I had the following error when removing a dead container  docker 17 06 1-ce on CentOS 7    Error response from daemon  driver  overlay  failed to remove root filesystem for  lt some-id gt    remove  var lib docker overlay  lt some-id gt  merged  device or resource busy   Here is how I fixed it   1  Check which other processes are also using docker resources    grep docker  proc   mountinfo  which outputs something like this  where the number after  proc  is the pid    proc 10001 mountinfo 179     proc 10002 mountinfo 149     proc 12345 mountinfo 159 149 0 36    var lib docker overlay       2  Check the process name of the above pid    ps -p 10001 -o comm  dockerd   ps -p 10002 -o comm  docker-containe   ps -p 12345 -o comm  nginx    lt  lt  lt -- This is suspicious      So  nginx with pid 12345 seems to also be using  var lib docker overlay      which is why we cannot remove the related container and get the device or resource busy error   See here for a discussion on how nginx shares the same mount namespace with docker containers thus prevents its deletion    3  Stop nginx and then I can remove the container successfully     sudo service nginx stop   docker rm  lt container-id gt

User · Answer

for Windows   del D  ProgramData docker containers  CONTAINER ID  del D  ProgramData docker windowsfilter  CONTAINER ID    Then restart the Docker Desktop

User · Answer

Actually things changed slightly these days in order to get rid of those dead containers you may try to unmount those blocked filesystems to release them  So if you get message like this  Error response from daemon  Cannot destroy container elated wozniak  Driver devicemapper failed to remove root filesystem 656cfd09aee399c8ae8c8d3e735fe48d70be6672773616e15579c8de18e2a3b3  Device is Busy   just run this  umount  var lib docker devicemapper mnt 656cfd09aee399c8ae8c8d3e735fe48d70be6672773616e15579c8de18e2a3b3   and you can normally remove container after that

[docker] Docker - Cannot remove dead container

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