Docker error when pulling Java 8 image - "failed to register layer"

Question

I am trying to pull the latest official Java docker image (java:8), but I keep getting a failed to register layer error. The Java 7 and 9 docker images download successfully. I am running OS X El Capitan version 10.11.1.

> docker -v
Docker version 1.10.0, build 590d5108
> docker-machine -v
docker-machine version 0.6.0, build e27fb87
> docker pull java:8
8: Pulling from library/java
03e1855d4f31: Extracting [==================================================>] 51.36 MB/51.36 MB
a3ed95caeb02: Download complete 
9269ba3950bb: Download complete 
6ecee6444751: Download complete 
5b865d39f77d: Download complete 
e7e5c0273866: Download complete 
6a4effbc4451: Download complete 
4b6cb08bb4bc: Download complete 
7b07ad270e2c: Download complete 
failed to register layer: rename /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/image/aufs/layerdb/tmp/layer-273420626 /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/image/aufs/layerdb/sha256/78dbfa5b7cbc2bd94ccbdba52e71be39b359ed7eac43972891b136334f5ce181: directory not empty

Has anyone run across a similar error and successfully resolved it? Thanks

Answer 1

Sometimes docker messes up its workspace, probably that's the cause. You can try these:

• stop all (java) containers, remove them, delete the java image (or all images), then re-pull and run.
• if this doesn't help, then restart the docker engine too.
• if even this doesn't solve the problem, stop the docker engine, delete the docker working directory, then restart docker engine.

In my experience, this solves all similar issues like OP.