Docker container keeps restarting

Question

I was trying rancher. I used the command: sudo docker run -d --restart=always -p 8080:8080 rancher/server to start run it. Then I stopped the container and removed it. But if I stop and restart the docker daemon or reboot my laptop, and lookup running containers using docker ps command, it will have rancher server running again. How do I stop/remove it completely and make sure it will not run again.

Answer 1

Note: following issue 11008 and PR 15348 (commit fd8b25c, docker v1.11.2), you would avoid the issue with:

sudo docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped -p 8080:8080 rancher/server

In your current situation, thanks to PR 19116, you can use docker update to update the restart policy.

docker update --restart=unless-stopped <yourContainerID_or_Name>

Then stop your container, restart your docker daemon: it won't restart said container.

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The OP codefire points to another reason in the comments:

When I first ran the start rancher server command, I didn't notice that it was being downloaded. So I may have retried that command a couple times.

That must be why the job kept on restarting even after stopping and removing containers that was started as rancher server.
After stopping and removing 8+ containers, it finally stopped

That is why I have aliases to quickly remove any stopped containers.