How Do I Completely Remove A Docker Container And All Dependencies?

WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 20 points –

I’m using tessypowder/backblaze-personal-wine, and I need to reinstall it due to some drive changes. I have tried docker rm [container ID], but when I add the container again, it seems to be stuck with the old wine settings. I have also tried adding it with a new name so it would theoretically be a totally new container, but that also seemed to inherit the broken wine settings.

I noticed that when I first install a container, there is a long ID string that seems to represent the container along with all the dependencies, but when I use docker ps, it only shows me a shorter string that seems to represent Backblaze alone. Should I be using rm with the longer string to remove wine too? If so, how can I get the terminal to display the full ID again so I can accomplish a full removal?

tl;dr How can I do a full removal of a docker container an all sub-programs (such as wine) that were installed along with it?

15

It sounds like you are using a volume and it's reading the settings you saved. What is the command you ran exactly and I can probably tell you what you need to change or delete to get rid of your old settings.

rm the container, then run docker system prune -a. This will remove all unused docker images, containers, networks, volumes, etc.

You should perhaps skim through https://docs.docker.com/storage/ quickly. That document explains that docker containers only have very limited persistence (this is kind of the whole point of containers). The only persistence of note is volumes. This is normally how settings are saved between recreating containers.

As for dependencies, well it's possible that one container depends on the service of another. Perhaps this is what you are describing?

Either way, for more detailed help, you will have to explain your setup with more specific technical details.

docker rm removes the container and everything inside it.

If you have any bind mounts or volumes with settings stored in there, you'll need to remove those as well.

If you want to clear out any stopped containers, orphaned images, networks, etc run "docker system prune"

What I think is happening is there is a persistent volume mount that needs to be cleared out. If you're using the docker run command with a -v flag, check the host path. It's likely there are saved configurations you're passing into the container.

Reinstall your machine from scratch and never install Docker again.