How to delete Docker Image properly

Delete Docker Image

Sometimes, when you run a docker image and then try to delete it, you might get an error message similar to following.

Error response from daemon: conflict: unable to delete 2867b9f04038 (must be forced) - image is being used by stopped container caff7e1e3508

We shall present you a step-by-step guide to delete a docker image properly.

1 Stop the container

You can get the container id from the error message. “image is being used by stopped container caff7e1e3508“

Following is the syntax to stop the container.

$ docker stop <containerid>

Example

root@arjun-VPCEH26EN:/home/arjun/workspace/docker# docker stop caff7e1e3508
caff7e1e3508

The container is stopped and echoes back with the container id.

2 Remove the container

Once the container is stopped, we have to remove the container.

Following is the syntax to remove the container.

$ docker rm <containerid>

Example

root@arjun-VPCEH26EN:/home/arjun/workspace/docker# docker rm caff7e1e3508
caff7e1e3508

3 Remove Docker Image

Once the container is removed, we are good to go with removing Docker Image.

Following is the syntax to remove the image.

$ docker rmi <imageid>

Example

root@arjun-VPCEH26EN:/home/arjun/workspace/docker# docker rmi 2867b9f04038
Untagged: java-application:latest
Deleted: sha256:2867b9f04038b6a8e4ffdad800d4ea9ad7fa8ba1ea5fd4e967e7731ef615199d
Deleted: sha256:d858962818586481bb955bb5791e775e37411b0f9e870fe9826858928c53410a
Deleted: sha256:a81438c31d4f1ec303b4872cabe239907e8e8cecf6787505bb28085c20b25f82
root@arjun-VPCEH26EN:/home/arjun/workspace/docker#

The docker image is removed successfully.

Conclusion

In this Docker Tutorial – Delete Docker Image, we have successfully removed the image from Docker’s images.