dockerd failed to start daemon: error initializing graphdriver: driver not supported

Question

I've been running a few containers (approximately a dozen) for awhile now. I've approached whatever the hard limit is on container/image sizes in the past, and had to clean these up to keep it from barfing all over everything, and recently the same has happened again.

I have identified several containers and images I can safely remove to reduce its footprint. But just as I was getting ready to do so, Docker crashed on me. And when I attempt to restart it, it crashes with the error message:

Fatal Error
Docker daemon failed to start
[timestamp] dockerd failed to start daemon: error initializing graphdriver: driver not supported

Thus, I can't use any of the command-line tools to remove these images/containers.

As there are running containers that I don't dare delete at this point, this makes it a little difficult to resolve. Is there a way to start Docker (on the mac) that doesn't actually start any of the containers so that maybe I can avoid this error?

Is the error message even related to my problem? I'm on Docker 2.3.0.4 if it matters.

Answer 1

You could switch to overlay2 driver instead of graph driver

You can follow the document below to switch

https://docs.docker.com/storage/storagedriver/overlayfs-driver/