Remove all stopped containers: “docker rm” requires at least 1 argument

Question

I\'m reading a book on docker. It is a couple of years old.

I\'ll cite:

If you want to get rid of all your stopped containers, you can use
the output of          


        

Answer 1

$ sudo docker rm -v $(docker ps -aq -f status=exited)
Got permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket at unix:///var/run/docker.sock: Get
http://%2Fvar%2Frun%2Fdocker.sock/v1.30/containers/json?all=1&filters=%7B%22status%22%3A%7B%22exited%22%3Atrue%7D%7D:
dial unix /var/run/docker.sock: connect: permission denied
"docker rm" requires at least 1 argument(s).
See 'docker rm --help'.

The permission denied message comes from the embedded docker ps command. It is run by the shell outside of your parent sudo command, and the output is passed to sudo to run the docker rm as root. There are several fixes.

The easy option, run the docker ps with sudo:

$ sudo docker rm -v $(sudo docker ps -aq -f status=exited)

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Option two is to run an entire shell as root:

$ sudo -s
# docker rm -v $(docker ps -aq -f status=exited)
# exit

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Or you can give your user access to the docker socket so sudo is no longer needed:

$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
$ newgrp docker

The above is a one time change, and gives that user root access implicitly with docker. Then you can run:

$ docker rm -v $(docker ps -aq -f status=exited)