Unable to install docker - invoke-rc.d: initscript docker, action “start” failed

Docker Engine General
1

Currently unable to install docker on Ubuntu 16.04. (when I have been able to previously). After running sudo apt-get install docker-ce (as per here) I get the following message:

Job for docker.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See “systemctl status docker.service” and “journalctl -xe” for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript docker, action “start” failed.
docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled; >vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d └─10-machine.conf
Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2017-09-07 21:44:50 BST; 3ms ago Docs: https://docs.docker.com
Process: 15332 ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker daemon -H tcp://0.0.0.0:2376 -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock --storage-driver aufs --tlsverify --tlscacert /etc/docker/ca.pem --tlscert /etc/docker/server.pem --tlskey /etc/docker/server-key.pem --label provider=generic (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE) Main PID: 15332 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

systemctl status docker.service does not really give anymore detail. journalctl -xe shows the following (summary):

Sep 07 21:56:45 mpt systemd1: Starting Docker Socket for the API.
Sep 07 21:56:45 mpt systemd1: Listening on Docker Socket for the API.
Sep 07 21:56:45 mpt systemd1: docker.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Sep 07 21:56:45 mpt systemd1: Failed to start Docker Application Container Engine.
The result is failed. Sep 07 21:56:45 mpt systemd1: docker.socket: Unit entered failed state. Sep 07 21:56:46 mpt sudo[16052]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root

When I run apt-get install again I get this message:

1 not fully installed or removed.1

(In addition to the error I previously mentioned.)

The solution to that was:

sudo apt-get remove docker*
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt autoremove

I had been trying to get to docker-machine to work (without success) from my laptop (Ubuntu 16.04) to this machine so I guess this could have caused some issue.

I’m a bit stuck. Any help and suggestions really appreciated.

Thanks,

2

I noticed the following files in /etc/systemd/system/

docker.service
docker.service.d
docker.socket
Removing these, in addition to the removal commands mentioned above resulted in the error going away.

3

In my case, I had kernel version greater than 3.10.0. But seems, the remnants from an older installation was preventing me from installing. So I had to remove, purge and then delete the following before installing again.
/usr/lib/docker/
/etc/docker.service.d/

4

In my case, I’ve manually updated WSL to 1.2 after update of Windows 10 from 21H2 to 22H2.
Docker stopped working, service would fail with exit code.

Solution:

sudo apt-get remove docker*
sudo apt-get remove docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt autoremove

then remove:

/etc/docker/

After that install per Ubuntu Docker guide succeeded and docker is working again.