Learn how to troubleshoot the Error response from daemon: Container is not running when Jenkins tries to interact with a container. Our Docker Support team is here to help you with your questions and concerns.

Error response from daemon: Container is not running | Jenkins error

Did you know that when Jenkins tries to interact with a Docker container that isn’t running, it triggers an error message?

Today, we will break down the error and provide troubleshooting steps to resolve the issue.

Understanding the Error

Jenkins leverages Docker to build and deploy applications within containers. It uses the Docker daemon, a background service, to manage these containers.

Error response from daemon: Container is not running

The error message is made of two parts:

• “Error response from daemon”:

  Indicates an issue reported by the Docker daemon.

• ”Container is not running”:

  This specifies that the container Jenkins needs to interact with is not currently in a running state.

Troubleshooting Steps

• First, examine the Jenkins job configuration. The specific container ID or name may be mentioned in the pipeline script or job settings. If we are not sure, we need to look for logs related to the failing Jenkins job. These logs might contain references to the container ID or name.
• Next, we need to verify the container status. So, view the list of running containers:

  docker ps

  If the container is not present, we can check for exited containers with:

  docker ps -a
• If the container is not running but should be, we can start it as seen here:

  docker start container_id
• In some cases, the error may be due to the container not running. Some of the reasons for this may include:
  • Check if the container was intended to be running and wasn’t just created.
  • Sometimes the container may have crashed due to errors or exited after completing its intended task. We can check the container logs for clues:

    docker logs container_id
  • In rare cases, if the system is low on resources (CPU, memory), Docker might be unable to start new containers.

[Need assistance with a different issue? Our team is available 24/7.]

Conclusion

With the above troubleshooting steps, we can identify and resolve the issue of Jenkins trying to interact with a Docker container that isn’t running.

In brief, our Support Experts demonstrated how to troubleshoot the “Error response from daemon: Container is not running” when Jenkins tries to interact with a container.