Category Archives: Virtualization

Change docker data directory

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There are other ways to do this, but a simple one is to replace the default directory with a symbolic link to wherever you want to have your data directory. This is tested with OpenSuse LEAP 42.3.

Stop docker (if it is running):

service docker stop

Move the contents of the docker default data directory (under Suse this is /var/lib/docker/) to somewhere else:

mv /var/lib/docker/ /path/to/new/folder/

Now create a symbolic link to the new location in place of the default directory:

ln -s /path/to/new/folder/ /var/lib/docker/

Start docker again, it should use the new location:

service docker stop

(PS: In my case I had not deleted all containers and images before, so I had some things that linux didn’t want to move to the new location. I just deleted them manually:)

btrfs subvolume delete btrfs/subvolumes/*

Docker cleanup

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Delete all containers

docker rm $(docker container ls -a -q)

Delete all unnamed images

docker rmi $(docker image ls | grep "<none>" | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' '  -f 3)

docker image ls lists all images,
grep "<none>" selects all that have the tag (or repository! or part of name!) “<none>” ,
tr -s ' ' merges sequences of spaces to a single space,
cut -d ' ' -f 3 splits each line at the space and gives the third column (the image id).
The list of ids is then passed on to docker rmi to be deleted.

Use at your own risk!