How to stop docker under Linux

Question

My version of OS Ubuntu 16.04. I want to stop docker, so I run in the terminal:

sudo systemctl stop docker

But this commands doesn

Answer 1

if you have no systemctl and started the docker daemon by:

sudo service docker start

you can stop it by:

sudo service docker stop

Answer 2

In my case, it was neither systemd nor a cron job, but it was snap. So I had to run:

sudo snap stop docker
sudo snap remove docker

... and the last command actually never ended, I don't know why: this snap thing is really a pain. So I also ran:

sudo apt purge snap

:-)

Answer 3

The output of ps aux looks like you did not start docker through systemd/systemctl.

It looks like you started it with:

sudo dockerd -H gridsim1103:2376

When you try to stop it with systemctl, nothing should happen as the resulting dockerd process is not controlled by systemd. So the behavior you see is expected.

The correct way to start docker is to use systemd/systemctl:

systemctl enable docker
systemctl start docker

After this, docker should start on system start.

EDIT: As you already have the docker process running, simply kill it by pressing CTRL+C on the terminal you started it. Or send a kill signal to the process.