May 14, 20251 yr Hi, a strange issue started for me a couple of days ago. The Docker daemon has started eating all the system memory, which brings the system to a complete crawl, to the point a shutdown takes 3+ hours and I can't ssh into the server. I have 32GB and usually only about 10GB will be used. None of the containers seem to be using the RAM, it's the Docker daemon itself. Last night I destroyed my Docker directory (/mnt/user/system). I use a directory instead of image, as I have about 70 containers, so prefer not to have a fixed size. Last time this occurred about a year ago, it was due to a corrupt Docker image caused by a hard crash from the Realtek driver plugin, and recreating the Docker image resolved the issue. When re-installing the containers this time, the issue started again. No particular container stands out for high memory usage. Here's some screenshots I took a few minutes ago from Glances, which is still refreshing every now and then since it was already open. I was able to stop the Docker daemon and the system returned to normal: root@Field:~# /etc/rc.d/rc.docker stop rc.docker: Stopping containers... rc.docker: Unraid managed containers stopped. rc.docker: Stopping network... rc.docker: Network stopped. rc.docker: Stopping Docker daemon... Waiting 30 seconds for Docker daemon to die.field-diagnostics-20250514-1931.zip rc.docker: Docker daemon... Stopped. As soon as it showed "rc.docker: Docker daemon... Stopped." in my ssh session, I heard the fans spin down and the system became responsive, allowing me to get the diagnostics report that was run while the system was slowed down.
May 14, 20251 yr Community Expert Try enabling the containers one or a few at a time to see if you can find the culprit, also would recommend recreating the docker folder as an image instead, docker folders can sometimes cause weird issues.
May 14, 20251 yr Author 1 hour ago, JorgeB said: Try enabling the containers one or a few at a time to see if you can find the culprit, also would recommend recreating the docker folder as an image instead, docker folders can sometimes cause weird issues. I had other issues using Docker images, such as containers sometimes failing to start up, sometimes even databases would crash while open, resulting in corruption. Had to restore a container from a backup 3 days in a row once. This hasn't happened since I moved to a directory, so I don't trust the stability of Docker images. Are you aware of anyone having the same issue I am due to a Docker directory? I don't want to risk having my containers becoming corrupted at random again if I can avoid it, I'll seriously consider changing OS if that's the only option. I'll try recreating the Docker directory for now and try to identify the culprit, if it is caused by a specific container starting. The slowdowns don't occur as soon as the containers are spun up though. Any advice for trying to find the needle in the haystack?
May 14, 20251 yr Community Expert 1 hour ago, SakabaRihiro said: Are you aware of anyone having the same issue I am due to a Docker directory? Don't remember if I've seen this specific issue, but I've seen a lot of different ones. 1 hour ago, SakabaRihiro said: Any advice for trying to find the needle in the haystack? Try using just half of them, if the same try the other half, then keep drilling down.
June 14, 20251 yr Author Solution Tried starting up a small set of docker containers, the system died again. Tried with another set instead, system died. Tried with another and the system again died.Then tried with some others, system was stable. Started others, system was stable. Eventually re-enabled all containers, system has been up for a couple of weeks now without issues.I have no idea what the cause was, I changed nothing.
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