Docker error response from daemon: "Conflict ... already in use by container"

I've been using Docker on my PC to run Quantum GIS with the following instructions I've found here: docker-qgis-desktop - A simple docker container that runs QGIS desktop

Everything has been running fine until last week when I started to get this error message:

> Error response from daemon: Conflict. > The name "qgis-desktop-2-4" is already in use by container 235566ae17b8. > You have to delete (or rename) that container to be able to reuse that name.

I'm not entirely sure what this means despite searching for clues on this site. I hadn't changed anything prior to this happening and have been successfully launching the container with this command:

sudo docker run --rm --name="qgis-desktop-2-4"     -i -t     -v ${HOME}:/home/${USER}     -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix     -e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY     kartoza/qgis-desktop:latest

How can I fix this?

It looks like a container with the name qgis-desktop-2-4 already exists in the system. You can check the output of the below command to confirm if it indeed exists:

$ docker ps -a

The last column in the above command's output is for names.

If the container exists, remove it using:

$ docker rm qgis-desktop-2-4

Or forcefully using,

$ docker rm -f qgis-desktop-2-4

And then try creating a new container.

Instead of command: docker run

You should use:

docker start **CONTAINER ID**

because the container is already exist

More info

I got this error quite a lot, so now I do a batch removal of all unused containers at once:

docker container prune 

add -f to force removal without prompt.

To list all unused containers (without removal):

docker container ls -a --filter status=exited --filter status=created 

See here more examples how to prune other objects (networks, volumes, etc.).

For people landing here from google like me and just want to build containers using multiple docker-compose files with one shared service:

Sometimes you have different projects that would share e.g. a database docker container. Only the first run should start the DB-Docker, the second should be detect that the DB is already running and skip this. To achieve such a behaviour we need the Dockers to lay in the same network and in the same project. Also the docker container name needs to be the same.

1st: Set the same network and container name in docker-compose

docker-compose in project 1:

version: '3'

services:
    service1:
        depends_on:
            - postgres
        # ...
        networks:
            - dockernet

    postgres:
        container_name: project_postgres
        image: postgres:10-alpine
        restart: always
        # ...
        networks:
            - dockernet

networks:
    dockernet:

docker-compose in project 2:

version: '3'

services:
    service2:
        depends_on:
            - postgres
        # ...
        networks:
            - dockernet

    postgres:
        container_name: project_postgres
        image: postgres:10-alpine
        restart: always
        # ...
        networks:
            - dockernet

networks:
    dockernet:

2nd: Set the same project using -p param or put both files in the same directory.

docker-compose -p {projectname} up

No issues with the latest kartoza/qgis-desktop

I ran

docker pull kartoza/qgis-desktop

followed by

docker run -it --rm --name "qgis-desktop-2-4" -v ${HOME}:/home/${USER} -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY kartoza/qgis-desktop:latest

I did try multiple times without the conflict error - you do have to exit the app beforehand. Also, please note the parameters do differ slightly.