docker build fails with "Error removing intermediate container: The given container is <nil>"

[mephi42]

$ docker --version
Docker version 1.3.0, build c78088f

I'm running a build, step 4 of which takes ~40min and creates ~2Gb of data. After it completes successfully, the following happens:

[[ Heavyweight step 4 success message here ]]
 ---> f3d3ea79dc14
Error removing intermediate container 44eb058fc224: The given container is nil
Step 5 : RUN [[ next command ]]
2014/10/20 13:25:26 No such id: b24142b94e2ed2d8014d67883e92124d44bea14eae76798e92489b29a76ab1c6

[mephi42]

Found the following line in crontab:

*/5 * * * * docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)

Obviously it interfered with docker build.

[ndessart]

As of docker 1.12.1 this is still an issue. Running docker rm $(docker ps -a -q) while another process is building an image might remove intermediate containers. It seems not possible to filter out intermediate containers from the docker ps command. Also the docker build command is successful even if intermediate containers have been removed. In this case the produced image does not contain the layer associated with the removed intermediate container.

[thaJeztah]

@ndessart improvements are coming; in 1.13, data management functions are added to make it easier to remove old images, containers, etc (see #26108), also --rm is moved to the daemon (currently it's a client-side implementation), see: #20848. I think that will resolve the race where the client tries to remove the intermediate container that has already been removed