What to do if the docker container hangs and does not respond to any command other than ctrl+c?

Question

I have been running a nvidia docker image since 13 days and it used to restart without any problems using docker start -i command. But, today while I was downloading pytorch inside the container, download got stuck at 5% and gave no response for a while.

I couldn't exit the container either by ctrl+d or ctrl+c. So, I exited the terminal and in new terminal I ran this docker start -i again. But ever since this particular container is not responding to any command. Be it start/restart/exec/commit ...nothing! any command with this container ID or name is just non-responsive and had to exit out of it only after ctrl+c

I cannot restart the docker service since it will kill all running docker containers. Cannot even stop the container using this docker container stop

Please help.

katxeus · Answer

You can make use of docker RestartPolicy: docker update --restart=always while mindful of caveats on the docker version you running.

or explore an answer by @Yale Huang from a similar question: How to add a restart policy to a container that was already created

Suvidha · Answer

I had to restart docker process to revive my container. There was nothing else I could do to solve it. used sudo service docker restart and then revived my container using docker run. I will try to build the dockerfile out of it in order to avoid future mishaps.

What to do if the docker container hangs and does not respond to any command other than ctrl+c?

2 Answers