Hi guys, I have no problem running docker (containers) via CLI, but I though it would be nice try Docker Desktop on my Ubuntu machine. But as soon as I start Docker Desktop it runs “starting Docker engine” indefinitely until my drive is full. The .docker folder then is about 70GB large. I read somewhere that this is the virtual disk size that is being created and that I could change it in the settings, but those are blocked until the engine starting process is finished (which it never does). Anyone else has experienced this?
Run
docker image prune -af docker volume prune -afThanks, it seems to not help though. Docker Desktop still says “Starting the Docker Engine…” while my disk space is shrinking fast and these commands run indefinitely.
I dunno then. Sorry, wish I could help.
You’re on Linux. You can install docker without the fancy desktop GUI. Just install the CLI.
This doesn’t exactly help your situation, but as a developer that builds and publishes docker images most days of my work week, I’d not suggest anyone do the same on a drive smaller than 512GB. Docker builds create layers on the fly as changes are seen and these can range from bytes to hundreds of megs at least. Casual docker development will easily chew through a few hundred gigs after a while, in my experience.
Just trying to put things in perspective: sadly, 70GB is peanuts here if you’re working with popular software stacks. Yes there needs to be some virtual image for docker desktop and due to the above, I usually have mine set at over 200GB.
Can you find out what files are being created? My host disk usually fill up with logs from containers if I don’t specify a max log size.
Yeah this is a common issue with docker. If you can get away with running the underlying tool without docker I would almost always recommend that instead.
Docker Desktop on ubuntu? I didn’t even know it ran on Ubuntu.
Check your system logs
journalctl --pager-endand search for docker. If you haven’t used it before enter?dockerand hit enter. That’ll search backwards for docker. Or openjournalctl --followin one window and watch the logs, then do what you did before.Honestly though, I’d not use docker desktop and use straight docker in the command line. I have no idea what Docker Desktop on linux is for as you have to run
docker compose upanddocker runin the command line anyway, right?Usually in my experience docker puts its images in /var/lib/docker. If your /var is on its own partition, or overall your disk space isn’t big enough you’ll have a bad time.
If you have other partitions with spare room, you can move the subdir docker from /var/lib to the other partition/drive, then symlink /var/lib/docker to that.
