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Julien Prugne for Webeleon

Posted on • Updated on

Purge docker with fire

On my development machines, I need docker most of the time...

The annoying parts are:

  • take a shit ton of place on my SSD for images and unused containers. Like 200GB
  • add a lot of virtual network interfaces.... around 50 useless interfaces polluting my computer.

I won't uninstall docker but I would like to remove all containers, all volumes, all networks, and all volumes.

Start by stopping all running containers.

sudo docker stop `docker ps -qa`
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then delete all containers (running and stopped)

sudo docker rm `docker ps -qa`
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then remove all networks not used by at least one container. None are left so we are removing all of them...

sudo docker network prune
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Now we will remove all the volumes:

sudo docker volume prune
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And finally, we can remove all the images:

sudo docker images prune
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Enjoy the space and silence.

ps: If you are only looking to remove unused resources go with sudo docker system prune

pps: If you are only looking to remove stopped container docker container prune -f thanks to Manuel Castellin for the tips.

Top comments (2)

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mcastellin profile image
Manuel Castellin

@webeleon great idea sharing these tips! Lots of people will enjoy some additional free space!

Also, as a quick daily cleanup you can use the following to "remove all stopped containers":

docker container prune -f
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bassochette profile image
Julien Prugne

Thanks.

I'll add that command to the memo