Docker containers not showing using docker ps but they are accessible?

General Discussions
#1

Environment:
Ubuntu LTS 20.04
Docker and using Portainer to manage my local containers

So I was simply rebooting my virtual machine host as well as my docker host vm. I rebooted and I couldn’t see my containers, images, and all that except 1 container. All of them were gone! Not even the portainer container itself can be seen in portainer. I tried using docker ps -a but nothing shows! However, When accessing the applications I created, I can still reach them. So they are running… But neither docker or portainer is able to see them. What could be the case here? I’m still able to use the portainer instance that was running on docker but no other running containers / images. I’ve been googling for a few hours but can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong. I’m quite a Linux / docker newbie so I’m having a hard time finding out what could have caused this.

Any help is much appreciated!

#2

Looks like a double installation using different package managers. Different user accounts might use either the one installation or the other. Try docker version with the users you typical work with. I expect not all of them return the same output.

Additionaly check the outputs of:

  • snap list | grep docker
  • dpkg --list | grep docker

Make sure only a single installation exists. If there is a snap version installed I recommend to get rid of it. You will want to use the packages from dockers own repositories.

2 Likes
#3

Thank you! you were right. I deleted the snap version and all is back to normal. Definitely have a steep learning curve ahead of me but for now all is good. Much appreciated!