I run about six containers on an Ubuntu Linux host with 32 GB of RAM. The system stays stable for long periods when I leave the containers alone, but after updating one or more of them with `docker compose pull && docker compose up -d`, the host usually becomes unresponsive within a day or two. I use DIUN to notify me when images have updates. Could the issue be caused by memory usage, disk space, logs, or old images and volumes? What diagnostics and cleanup steps should I use, and is there a better way to update the containers?
3 Answers
Also check disk space, not just RAM. Docker's default JSON logs do not rotate, so a noisy container can fill `/var/lib/docker` over time. Run `df -h` and `docker system df`, and inspect the container log files. Configure log rotation in `/etc/docker/daemon.json`, for example with a 10 MB maximum size and three retained files, then restart Docker.
The update command itself is a normal way to replace Compose-managed images. Pruning is optional and mainly reclaims disk space; it does not free RAM. After confirming that unused images or volumes are safe to remove, you can use commands such as `docker image prune` rather than blindly deleting everything. The key is to identify whether the failure is caused by a leaking container, unbounded logs, exhausted storage, or something else.
Before changing the update process, find out what is actually exhausting the system. Check `journalctl` after a hang or reboot for OOM-killer messages, and monitor the containers with `docker stats` to see whether one of them steadily grows in RAM usage. A monitoring tool can help if the problem develops slowly.
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