# Can't start/stop discourse or do anything due to lack of space
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [July 12, 2017, 10:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088 "2017-07-12T22:05:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Semaphorism](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Semaphorism)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 10:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/1 "2017-07-12T22:05:00Z")
Recently i’ve ran into a problem, I am running 2 discourse forums, and I want to edit one, because its in an infinite redirect loop that I can only fix via discourse config, but can’t because I can’t stop the container. I don’t want to force it using kill or something, as that would possibly cause issues.
I did `df -h` and it returns
```plaintext
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 16G 4.0K 16G 1% /dev
tmpfs 3.2G 792K 3.2G 1% /run
/dev/md2 20G 15G 4.0G 79% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 16G 2.2M 16G 1% /run/shm
none 100M 0 100M 0% /run/user
/dev/md3 1.8T 39G 1.7T 3% /home
none 20G 15G 4.0G 79% /var/lib/docker/aufs/mnt/c4a287fb570f9d346f768e40d819f78466922b241ab53c3b4d0e67d1093e948f
none 20G 15G 4.0G 79% /var/lib/docker/aufs/mnt/36c27719e26653039d1bac8fb1fc0337c45cd145eaad0b223cd5b5469b2ea295
shm 64M 4.0K 64M 1% /var/lib/docker/containers/5c7e37e4f1bb9339a900e19c6c74e918d0f0b0c76b4b3f23ed1cc342e1dbc610/shm
shm 64M 4.0K 64M 1% /var/lib/docker/containers/3e83e4a36695fd4272863b5b9f3e8a08c3377fbc246b813173202c472112867a/shm
```
I ran the command `./launcher cleanup` however, it does not free up any space. Any command using start/stop will not work, it just says it doesn’t have enough so it can’t continue.
The server has 2x2TB harddrives in raid 1, so space isn’t a problem in general.
Help appreciated.
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 10:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/2 "2017-07-12T22:20:59Z")
When you try a rebuild, the launcher suggests a cleanup is that not working for you? What is the output?
Also, our cleanup scripts will only clean stopped images to **try** to get more space, they don’t work if you are actually using all this space.
---
### Author:  [@Semaphorism](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Semaphorism)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 10:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/3 "2017-07-12T22:23:32Z")
When I try to rebuild it gives me this
> ****
>
> ```plaintext
> You have less than 5GB of free space on the disk. You will need more space to continue
>
> Would you like to attempt to recover space by cleaning docker images and containers in the system?(y/N)n
> root@REDACTED:/home/discourse# apt-get clean
> root@REDACTED:/home/discourse# ./launcher rebuild app
> You have less than 5GB of free space on the disk. You will need more space to continue
>
> Would you like to attempt to recover space by cleaning docker images and containers in the system?(y/N)
>
> ```
Then the next step it asks to confirm, and I input yes, then gives me this output
> ****
>
> ```plaintext
> Would you like to attempt to recover space by cleaning docker images and containers in the system?(y/N)y
> WARNING! This will remove:
> - all stopped containers
> - all volumes not used by at least one container
> - all networks not used by at least one container
> - all dangling images
> Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N] y
> Total reclaimed space: 0B
> If the cleanup was successful, you may try again now
>
> ```
But trying again won’t do anything.
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 10:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/4 "2017-07-12T22:31:09Z")
Looks like you have no old images, what’s the output of `docker images` and `docker ps -a` ?
---
### Author:  [@Semaphorism](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Semaphorism)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 10:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/5 "2017-07-12T22:39:22Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> docker ps -a
```plaintext
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
5c7e37e4f1bb local_discourse/app1 "/sbin/boot" 3 months ago Up 9 days 0.0.0.0:redacted->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:redacted->443/tcp app1
3e83e4a36695 local_discourse/app2 "/sbin/boot" 4 months ago Up 9 days 0.0.0.0:redacted->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:redacted->443/tcp app2
```
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 10:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/6 "2017-07-12T22:48:43Z")
annnnd `docker images`?
---
### Author:  [@Semaphorism](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Semaphorism)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 10:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/7 "2017-07-12T22:50:56Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> docker images
Sorry, forgot that one
> ****
>
> ```plaintext
> REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
> discourse/base 2.0.20170531 4aa3fe49ae44 6 weeks ago 1.66GB
> local_discourse/app1 latest a2e3806eec2b 3 months ago 2.48GB
> local_discourse/app2 latest 0fb69bf47bfb 4 months ago 2.42GB
> discourse/discourse 1.3.10 1881a9bd3afd 6 months ago 1.54GB
> samsaffron/docker-gc latest 54ca424ca8d6 20 months ago 57.7MB
>
> ```
---
### Author:  [@mpalmer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mpalmer)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 10:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/8 "2017-07-12T22:59:13Z")
> [@Semaphorism](#):
>
> The server has 2x2TB harddrives in raid 1
… which you allocated almost all of to `/home`. So, short of bind-mounting `/var/lib/docker` and `/var/discourse` into there, you’re always going to be very short of space. You might want to consider reinstalling the machine with a saner partitioning scheme.
---
### Author:  [@Semaphorism](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Semaphorism)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 11:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/9 "2017-07-12T23:06:39Z")
Yeah, it was default layout for the install, I am not even sure if I can install it differently ,and its probably too late at this point, I have too much other applications setup on it. I moved discourse to /home anyway (or the shared data, and container config, etc) so it didn’t use up the root partition.
Is it possible to just move docker images to /home? I really can’t reinstall the server right now.
---
### Author:  [@mpalmer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mpalmer)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 11:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/10 "2017-07-12T23:09:18Z")
Docker images live under `/var/lib/docker`; there’s probably a way to change where docker stores all its stuff, otherwise the aforementioned bind mounting should probably work.
---
### Author:  [@Semaphorism](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Semaphorism)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/11 "2017-07-12T23:11:16Z")
Well what should I do with the containers if I can’t stop them? what damage would killing them do? or perhaps is there another way I can stop it safely?
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2017, 11:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/12 "2017-07-12T23:21:28Z")
`./launcher stop app --skip-prereqs` should work.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2019, 4:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/13 "2019-06-28T16:51:51Z")
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2019, 4:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-start-stop-discourse-or-do-anything-due-to-lack-of-space/66088/14 "2019-07-28T16:51:53Z")
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