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dockerdocker-composevirtual-machinediskdiskspace

Remove huge space occupied by docker folders


I have a VM on which I have been running (for a long time) a docker-compose stack.

Suddenly I started getting notifications about low disk space on my machine.

I noticed the following 2 directories occupying a disproportionally large amount of space

/var/lib/docker/containers

and

/var/lib/docker/overlay2

What is the type of information held there and how can I avoid the problem of disk depletion in the future consistently?


Solution

  • Docker save data for images and logs

    For cleaning unused images and containers you can use the command docker system prune maybe with -a --volume options

    For logs you can view response in this answer

    Truncate logs

    echo "" > $(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' <container_name_or_id>)
    

    Setup logs rotation in /etc/docker/daemon.json

    {
      "log-driver": "json-file",
      "log-opts": {"max-size": "10m", "max-file": "3"}
    }