Keep a clean Docker environment 🧹

Docker is a really great tool, and an essential one nowadays but it is easy that docker consumes a lot of space quickly if you doesn't do a regular maintenance to your installation,

TL;DR

Clean your docker installation by removing unused containers with docker rm <CONTAINER ID> or if you wanna go beyond use docker system prune -a

Purge Docker ⚠️

In my case my root partition becoming up to almost 20gb, slowly it was growing and growing, when I realize that indeed was Docker who was consuming most of the space, what was my action do a purge.

docker system prune --volume -a

Above command will delete all stopped containers, networks not in use, images not used and all build cache! it is a nuclear option and damn the consequences! so use it under your own risk!

In my case it was OK as I don't have any sensitive data or important states in my docker environment, I just wanna reclaim back my disk space.

After that cleaning my root space turn down to 8,8gb 😮 🎉

Final tip

also you could just delete containers that are older that the time given with:

docker container prune --filter "until=24h"

Useful if you would like to conserve latest containers.

Source

• Linux Format magazine October 2023 LXF307 p75