I’ll introduce how to resolve the Docker error “Error response from daemon: Container xxx is restarting, wait until the container is running”.

Background

This is a story about running Mastodon on Linode VPS, encountering physical hardware failure, and after troubleshooting, the docker container running the application started throwing errors and wouldn’t start.

Docker Error Situation Investigation

$ sudo docker exec -it mastodon_web_1 /bin/sh
Error response from daemon: Container e398061d59d6cb20f3cdbbf4013e9e6e8080b8c1afc59d7b06b7d8c3f0dd1d47 is restarting, wait until the container is running

First, I tried to enter the mastodon_web_1 shell but couldn’t.

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS                          PORTS                              NAMES
45ebb1c8ef61        gargron/mastodon    "npm run start"          2 days ago          Up 4 minutes                    3000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:4000->4000/tcp   mastodon_streaming_1
9d8bd45c983c        gargron/mastodon    "bundle exec sidek..."   2 days ago          Up 4 minutes                    3000/tcp, 4000/tcp                 mastodon_sidekiq_1
e398061d59d6        gargron/mastodon    "bundle exec rails..."   2 days ago          Restarting (1) 18 seconds ago                                      mastodon_web_1
53e10f7f14d4        postgres:alpine     "docker-entrypoint..."   3 days ago          Up 4 minutes                    5432/tcp                           mastodon_db_1
04f51c868073        redis:alpine        "docker-entrypoint..."   3 days ago          Up 4 minutes                    6379/tcp                           mastodon_redis_1

When I checked the container status with docker ps, it seemed to be stuck in Restarting (1) status and wouldn’t start.

$ docker logs e398061d59d6

A server is already running. Check /mastodon/tmp/pids/server.pid.
=> Booting Puma
=> Rails 5.0.2 application starting in production on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Run `rails server -h` for more startup options
Exiting

When I checked the logs with the docker logs command, I found it was failing at puma server process startup.

Steps I took

$ docker rm mastodon_web_1
mastodon_web_1

Since mastodon_web_1 is an application container, I deleted mastodon_web_1 with the docker rm command. If this were a database container, I couldn’t delete it with docker rm, so I’d need to consider other approaches.

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                              NAMES
45ebb1c8ef61        gargron/mastodon    "npm run start"          2 days ago          Up 19 minutes       3000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:4000->4000/tcp   mastodon_streaming_1
9d8bd45c983c        gargron/mastodon    "bundle exec sidek..."   2 days ago          Up 19 minutes       3000/tcp, 4000/tcp                 mastodon_sidekiq_1
53e10f7f14d4        postgres:alpine     "docker-entrypoint..."   3 days ago          Up 19 minutes       5432/tcp                           mastodon_db_1
04f51c868073        redis:alpine        "docker-entrypoint..."   3 days ago          Up 19 minutes       6379/tcp                           mastodon_redis_1

I confirmed with docker ps that mastodon_web_1 is gone.

$ sudo docker-compose stop
Stopping mastodon_streaming_1 ... done
Stopping mastodon_sidekiq_1 ... done
Stopping mastodon_db_1 ... done
Stopping mastodon_redis_1 ... done

I stopped all containers with docker-compose stop and then started the containers with docker-compose up -d.

$ sudo docker-compose up -d
Starting mastodon_redis_1
Starting mastodon_db_1
Starting mastodon_streaming_1
Starting mastodon_sidekiq_1
Creating mastodon_web_1

At this point, since mastodon_web_1 doesn’t exist, a new container is created.

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                              NAMES
20ce27549e01        gargron/mastodon    "bundle exec rails..."   5 minutes ago       Up 5 minutes        0.0.0.0:3000->3000/tcp, 4000/tcp   mastodon_web_1
45ebb1c8ef61        gargron/mastodon    "npm run start"          2 days ago          Up 5 minutes        3000/tcp, 0.0.0.0:4000->4000/tcp   mastodon_streaming_1
9d8bd45c983c        gargron/mastodon    "bundle exec sidek..."   2 days ago          Up 5 minutes        3000/tcp, 4000/tcp                 mastodon_sidekiq_1
53e10f7f14d4        postgres:alpine     "docker-entrypoint..."   3 days ago          Up 5 minutes        5432/tcp                           mastodon_db_1
04f51c868073        redis:alpine        "docker-entrypoint..."   3 days ago          Up 5 minutes        6379/tcp                           mastodon_redis_1

With docker ps, I could confirm that mastodon_web_1 is successfully running.

Summary

I hope this helps those who are using Docker for the first time with Mastodon and suddenly need to handle such situations.

Reference Information

• Dockerイメージとコンテナの削除方法 - Qiita

That’s all from the Gemba.