Cannot stop or restart a docker container

Question

When trying to stop or restart a docker container I'm getting the following error message:

$ docker restart 5ba0a86f36ea
Error response from daemon: Cannot restart container 5ba0a86f36ea: [2] Container does not exist: container destroyed
Error: failed to restart containers: [5ba0a86f36ea]

But when I run

$ docker logs -f 5ba0a86f36ea

I can see the logs, so obviously the container does exist. Any ideas?

Edit:

sorry, I forgot to mention this:

When I run docker ps -a I see the container as up and running. However the application inside it is malfunctioning so I want to restart it, or just get a fresh version of that application online. But when I can't stop and remove the container, I also can't get a new application up and running, which would be listening to the same port.

I would guess you can destroy a container but still have logs about it, when it has been destroyed. Otherwise your observation does not make sense. — ikrabbe, Jul 12 '15 at 08:22
Do you want to run a fresh container with all the data and changes wiped away or do you want to get like important files out of the one you used? — Paul, Jul 12 '15 at 08:23
This can happen if your docker image does not have proper process handling. — Burhan Khalid, Jul 12 '15 at 09:35

Abhishek Kashyap · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-27T18:34:49.090

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I couldn't locate boot2docker in my machine. So, I came up with something that worked for me.

$ sudo systemctl restart docker.socket docker.service
$ docker rm -f <container id>

Check if it helps you as well.

edited Oct 27 '20 at 18:34

answered Jan 12 '18 at 06:12

Abhishek Kashyap

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I had to use the force option `docker rm -f `, but it works. Thank you. – chaseisabelle Oct 27 '20 at 11:12
Thanks for the feedback @chaseisabelle. It make sense. I'll incorporate it in the answer. – Abhishek Kashyap Oct 27 '20 at 18:26
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On windows machine close Docker Desktop then stop Docker.Service from task manager. Then rerun Docker Desktop. – enumerator Jun 24 '21 at 08:56
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Tried everything else... `sudo systemctl restart docker.socket docker.service` was the only thing that did it for me. – shaneparsons Jul 21 '22 at 18:18

score 97 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 16 '19 at 19:35

97

All the docker: start | restart | stop | rm --force | kill commands may not work if the container is stuck. You can always restart the docker daemon. However, if you have other containers running, that may not be the option. What you can do is:

ps aux | grep <<container id>> | awk '{print $1 $2}'

The output contains:

<<user>><<process id>>

Then kill the process associated with the container like so:

sudo kill -9 <<process id from above command>>

That will kill the container and you can start a new container with the right image.

answered Sep 16 '19 at 19:35

Teddy Belay

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The outcome for me is `kill: illegal process id: [USER][PROCESS_ID]`. Do you know of any alternatives? – flarkmarup Dec 19 '19 at 08:55
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I get `No such process` – aletede91 Apr 15 '20 at 17:17
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If you are having `No such process`, there is good chance that `ps aux` returned the command you *just run* (`ps aux | grep`) – Amaury Liet Apr 26 '21 at 16:32
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Yes officer, this is the man that killed the container. (Thanks!) – Aaron McMillin Jul 15 '21 at 03:45

score 45 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 12 '15 at 08:26

That looks like docker/docker/issues/12738, seen with docker 1.6 or 1.7:

Some container fail to stop properly, and the restart

We are seeing this issue a lot in our users hosts when they upgraded from 1.5.0 to 1.6.0.
After the upgrade, some containers cannot be stopped (giving 500 Server Error: Internal Server Error ("Cannot stop container xxxxx: [2] Container does not exist: container destroyed")) or forced destroyed (giving 500 Server Error: Internal Server Error ("Could not kill running container, cannot remove - [2] Container does not exist: container destroyed")). The processes are still running on the host.
Sometimes, it works after restarting the docker daemon.

There are some workarounds:

I've tried all remote API calls for that unkillable container and here are results:

json, stats, changes, top, logs returned valid responses

stop, pause, wait, kill reported 404 (!)

After I finished with remote API, I double-checked docker ps (the container was still there), but then I retried docker kill and it worked! The container got killed and I could remove it.

Or:

What worked was to restart boot2docker on my host. Then docker rm -f

$ boot2docker stop
$ boot2docker start
$ docker rm -f 1f061139ba04

Thx, yes restarting the machine helped. Unfortunately it's a server and shouldn't be restarted too often, hope they'll fix the bug. As I have docker 1.7 — peter, Jul 12 '15 at 09:34
I agree, this really is a workaround, not a full resolution. I will monitor that bug report. — VonC, Jul 12 '15 at 09:36
I had an unhealthy container that I could not stop or kill : docker stop -f # helped, thanks! — sergpank, Apr 15 '20 at 12:18
This is a very good suggestion. For me one channels connection was open to the container and I couldn't stop or kill the container. Then I simply closed the browser which was communicating with the container. Afterwards it was simple to stop and kill the container. — Sardar Faisal, May 04 '22 at 09:31

score 15 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 02 '16 at 12:11

15

Worth knowing:

If you are running an ENTRYPOINT script ... the script will work with the shebang

#!/bin/bash -x

But will stop the container from stopping with

#!/bin/bash -xe

edited Apr 02 '16 at 12:11

halfer

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answered Jan 15 '16 at 13:08

danday74

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what would be the reason for this? i cannot find any reference for it – bigbear3001 Jul 22 '20 at 13:01
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Absolutely no idea, I just spotted it when messing around – danday74 Sep 20 '21 at 09:33

score 13 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 18 '19 at 14:21

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Enjoy

sudo aa-remove-unknown

This is what worked for me.

answered Oct 18 '19 at 14:21

FabianoLothor

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Yes, this has successfully removed the infected container. – Soumyaansh Dec 07 '20 at 18:12
One should mention that you may need to reboot your machine after that since this will break a number of other things as well, especially snaps -- e.g., spotify. Just run `sudo aa-remove-unknown -n` for a dry-run first to see what all will be affected. – Christian Fritz May 18 '22 at 23:46

score 13 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 21 '21 at 01:18

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For anyone on a Mac who has Docker Desktop installed. I was able to just click the tray icon and say Restart Docker. Once it restarted was able to delete the containers.

answered Jan 21 '21 at 01:18

Jerinaw

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score 11 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 25 '20 at 11:25

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Check if there is any zombie process using "top" command.

docker ps | grep <<container name>>

Get the container id.

ps -ef | grep <<container id>>

ps -ef|grep defunct | grep java

And kill the container by Parent PID .

answered Feb 25 '20 at 11:25

ninohead

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score 9 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 09 '21 at 14:10

9

If you're on a Mac and try this via Terminal: Use killall Docker to quit Docker.

Restart it in the Applications folder or with open /Applications/Docker.app.

Subsequently you can run a docker rm <id> for the concerned container.

answered Jul 09 '21 at 14:10

moritzgvt

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score 5 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 31 '19 at 11:41

I had the same problem on a windows host machine and none of the other options here worked for me. I ended up just needing to delete the physical container folder, which was located here:

C:\ProgramData\Docker\containers\[container guid]

I had stopped the docker service first just to be safe and when I restarted it, the broken containers were now gone and I was able to create new ones. I suspect the same will work on a linux host machine, but I do not know where the container folders are kept on that OS.

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Jun 10 '22 at 10:54

4

Ubuntu Stop the container by using its system process ID. Get the main process ID using:

docker inspect -f '{{.State.Pid}}' container-id

This will return an id as ´25430´. Kill this with the command

sudo kill -9 25430

answered Jun 10 '22 at 10:54

Sardar Faisal

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score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 02 '20 at 11:26

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in my case, i couldn't delete container created with nomad jobs, there's no output for the docker logs <ContainerID> and, in general, it looks like frozen.

until now the solution is: sudo service docker restart, may someone suggest better one?

answered Sep 02 '20 at 11:26

Artem Kozlenkov

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Dmitriy · Answer 12 · 2023-01-11T04:31:40.717

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If you're on Ubuntu, make sure docker-compose isn't installed as a snap. This will cause all kinds of random issues, including the above.

Remove the snap:

sudo snap remove docker-compose

And install manually from the compose repository:

Docker compose installation instruction

edited Jan 11 '23 at 04:31

answered Aug 14 '20 at 20:58

Dmitriy

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score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Dec 25 '21 at 23:38

i forgot that i had made the container start as a system service.
so if i stopped or killed the container, the service would bring it back.

if you are using systemctl, you can list all the running services with systemctl | grep running and find the name of the service.

then use sudo systemctl disable <your_service_name> to stop it.

score -1 · Answer 14 · edited Oct 22 '21 at 08:32

-1

Sometimes this is caused by problem of the docker daemon. I solved the problem by restarting the docker service. On Linux:

systemctl restart docker

edited Oct 22 '21 at 08:32

rjdkolb

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answered Oct 22 '21 at 05:25

蔡火胜

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score -4 · Answer 15 · answered Jul 29 '21 at 15:45

-4

In my case, docker rm $(docker ps -aq) works for me.

answered Jul 29 '21 at 15:45

Panda

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ATTENTION: Be careful using this command! It will remove all of your docker containers (stopped! Unless you have your data stored in a volume running this command might cause unintended data loss! Furthermore this doesn't address the POs question. The question is about stopping and restarting a container. – Andru Nov 20 '21 at 14:49

Cannot stop or restart a docker container

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