Docker error processing tar file occurs due to insufficient space or due to permission issues.

Here at Bobcares, we have seen several causes for this error while troubleshooting Docker issues as part of our Docker Hosting Support.

Today we’ll take a look at the cause for this error and how to fix it.

Why does Docker error processing tar file occur

Now let’s see why does this Docker error occur.

Generally, this error occurs while running any command in the Docker. This occurs if there is no space left on the device.
Also, in some cases, we noticed that this error also arose when there were some permission issues with certain files.

However, the reason for this error differs accordingly.

For instance, the error appears as below.

How we fix Docker error processing tar file

Let’s move to the solution part of this error. Here are the cases where we resolved this error for our customers.

1. Remove unused images

Recently, one of our customers approached us with the same error. He was trying to clear the space from his device and ran into the below error.

ERROR: Error processing tar file(exit status 1): unexpected EOF.

Now, let’s see how our Support Engineers fix this error for our customers.

First, we used a built-in command to remove unused images (Version 1.13+)

docker image prune

Then we ran the below command to stop the Docker.

systemctl stop docker

After that, we backed up the docker folder /var/lib/docker and removed it by running the below command

NOTE: This will remove images, containers, volumes, … make sure you back it up first.

rm -rf /var/lib/docker

Once this is done, we started the Docker service by running the below command.

systemctl start docker

This, fixed the error.

2. Permission issue

In a few cases, we saw that the files owned by root in the directory having permission issues. Providing the files proper permissions fixed the issue. For that, we used the below command.

chown -R <username>:<group> /var/lib/docker/tmp

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Conclusion

In short, this Docker error occurs due to insufficient space or due to permission issues. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers resolve this error to our customers.