5 ms·

These are real problems with docker, but do we wanna talk about docker for Mac? A total performance disaster. https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues?q=is%3Ai

These are real problems with docker, but do we wanna talk about docker for Mac? A total performance disaster. https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Ao...

thosakwe 7y ago
I have no idea how, but Docker for Mac was taking up a whopping 65GB of space in one of the cache folders in ~/Library, although I had uninstalled it months ago. I wish I had taken a screenshot, but I was honestly dumbfounded. I had used it maybe once, ever. EDIT: It turns out I’m not making this up/an edge case, at least 940 people have run into this too: https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/371 https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/371
- etimberg 7y ago
  I have that problem too. Solution seemed to be to set up an alias to clean out old images, volumes, etc and run that every so often
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Not just in MacOS. Over time, Docker can eat all your storage.
    - jdnenej 7y ago
      Because it keeps around all of the images you use as well as the containers after they are stopped so you can resume them. there is a command that auto automatically removes all unused images and containers you can use.
      - mirimir 7y ago
        True. But there are situations where things get ~corrupted, and it becomes ~impossible to recover without basically nuking everything. But then, I was running containers with resource limits and long-term storage. So I could have thousands of lightweight "VMs" per physical server.
  - dawnerd 7y ago
    The issue linked is that is doesn't actually reclaim the space - you either have to wipe it out or do that workaround mentioned to resize it manually.
  - wp381640 7y ago
    those scripts are now built into docker with `docker system prune`
    - smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
      “docker system prune” is a recipe for pegging my cpu for the next few hours.
      - wp381640 7y ago
        man nice
        thosakwe 7y ago
        For those who downvoted this, I’m pretty sure GP is referring to the “nice” command line tool, used to give a task a certain priority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_(Unix) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_(Unix)
      - techntoke 7y ago
        If that is the case then you likely have something misconfigured, or are running on seriously underpowered hardware or in a VM that needs more resources allocated to it.
      - aledalgrande 7y ago
        It used to be, with docker for Mac v2 it became fast for me. Problem is I don't wanna be wiping out dozens of images, figure out which ones I wanna keep etc. I want a configuration setting saying "keep X versions" and the rest will automatically get pruned.
    - semerda 7y ago
      Little changed after I ran this script. My ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/ is a whopping 64.01 GB. Running 'docker system prune' only recovers: Total reclaimed space: 1.986GB But when I check ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/ for size after prune it still says 64.01 GB. Am I doing something wrong or is 'docker system prune' useless?
- semerda 7y ago
  Yap I confirm. 64 GB on my mac.. what da! Proof: https://www.flickr.com/photos/semerda/48720232588/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/semerda/48720232588/
devin 7y ago
Seriously. It's absolute trash. I don't even want to think about how much time I've lost waiting for startup and teardown operations. Edit: Before you downvote me too heavily, go give the issues list a thorough read. Some of the problems are quite bad. Perhaps I could have said it in a nicer, but really, it's bad, and it's been bad for a good long while now.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
djsumdog 7y ago
I hate how the Docker team called it native. Docker for Mac/Windows still run in a hypervisor because so much of Docker is specific to Linux/cgroups. There was a FreeBSD port of Docker that attempted to implement a lot of the Docker API using zfs+jails but it went unmaintained and was never ported to the newer modular Docker implementation. You're always going to get that performance hit with the hypervisor layer there.
- charles_f 7y ago
  Docker for Windows is coming to use the WSL2, beta is already out.
  - sigjuice 7y ago
    Calling it “Docker for Windows” is still highly inappropriate and misleading. It is super confusing.
  - lojack 7y ago
    WSL 2 itself uses a hypervisor though, so this is sort of a moot point.
    - addicted 7y ago
      Is this correct? I thought the headline feature of WSL2 was that unlike WSL it didn't use the hypervisor. Edit: I looked it up. WSL2 continues to use a VM. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/
      - skissane 7y ago
        > Is this correct? I thought the headline feature of WSL2 was that unlike WSL it didn't use the hypervisor. No, the headline feature of WSL2 is it uses a real Linux kernel under a hypervisor, as opposed to WSL1's approach of a kernel driver running inside the NT kernel which partially emulates the Linux syscall API. > Edit: I looked it up. WSL2 continues to use a VM. More accurately, WSL2 starts using a VM, whereas WSL1 didn't. WSL2 runs the Linux kernel inside a VM. WSL1 runs Linux processes under the NT kernel (albeit as a special type of lightweight process called a picoprocess), with an emulation layer to translate Linux syscalls into NT kernel calls.
dawnerd 7y ago
I just recently switched to using vscode with the remote ssh plugin and setup an ubuntu vm on my windows machine and performance is like 100x better. Docker for mac is basically dead to me now, going to finish migrating my projects over to the VM and uninstall it from my laptop.
- yoube 7y ago
  Have you tried running the Vscode + Linux Subsystem + Docker on Windows stack? It's been pretty good so far (a good writeup on this is at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows-and-wsl-to-work-flawlessly https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows...)
  - nickjj 7y ago
    Thanks for sharing that link, author here. Yeah I don't know why but on Windows the volume performance generally seems to be a lot better than Mac. I have nothing but good things to say even on 5 year old hardware. Massive web apps (including using webpack) are very very speedy with volumes with a number of different stacks (flask, rails, phoenix, webpack, node). I still use that set up years later and it's really solid.
EamonnMR 7y ago
For all of it's slowness, and constantly filling my hard drive with old builds because that's the workflow for some reason, it solves the real problem of MacOS constantly breaking packages. That alone makes it worth it.
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  Yeah. I have to run docker system prune from time to time.
par 7y ago
Docker for Mac is a performance nightmare. It requires state of the art $3400 macbook pro to run properly, and even then still takes seconds (or 10s of seconds) to spin up, start local servers, etc. Build processes that would've run locally take 3-10x longer running on docker for mac. The whole thing can be quite frustrating.
month13 7y ago
Wondering if it's worthwhile just rolling my own vm and run whatever i want in there. I'd lose all the ability to bind to my host's ports, but would be able to control the daemon a bit better.

thosakwe 7y ago

I have no idea how, but Docker for Mac was taking up a whopping 65GB of space in one of the cache folders in ~/Library, although I had uninstalled it months ago. I wish I had taken a screenshot, but I was honestly dumbfounded. I had used it maybe once, ever. EDIT: It turns out I’m not making this up/an edge case, at least 940 people have run into this too: https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/371 https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/371

etimberg 7y ago
I have that problem too. Solution seemed to be to set up an alias to clean out old images, volumes, etc and run that every so often
- mirimir 7y ago
  Not just in MacOS. Over time, Docker can eat all your storage.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    Because it keeps around all of the images you use as well as the containers after they are stopped so you can resume them. there is a command that auto automatically removes all unused images and containers you can use.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      True. But there are situations where things get ~corrupted, and it becomes ~impossible to recover without basically nuking everything. But then, I was running containers with resource limits and long-term storage. So I could have thousands of lightweight "VMs" per physical server.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  The issue linked is that is doesn't actually reclaim the space - you either have to wipe it out or do that workaround mentioned to resize it manually.
- wp381640 7y ago
  those scripts are now built into docker with `docker system prune`
  - smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
    “docker system prune” is a recipe for pegging my cpu for the next few hours.
    - wp381640 7y ago
      man nice
      - thosakwe 7y ago
        For those who downvoted this, I’m pretty sure GP is referring to the “nice” command line tool, used to give a task a certain priority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_(Unix) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_(Unix)
    - techntoke 7y ago
      If that is the case then you likely have something misconfigured, or are running on seriously underpowered hardware or in a VM that needs more resources allocated to it.
    - aledalgrande 7y ago
      It used to be, with docker for Mac v2 it became fast for me. Problem is I don't wanna be wiping out dozens of images, figure out which ones I wanna keep etc. I want a configuration setting saying "keep X versions" and the rest will automatically get pruned.
  - semerda 7y ago
    Little changed after I ran this script. My ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/ is a whopping 64.01 GB. Running 'docker system prune' only recovers: Total reclaimed space: 1.986GB But when I check ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/ for size after prune it still says 64.01 GB. Am I doing something wrong or is 'docker system prune' useless?
semerda 7y ago
Yap I confirm. 64 GB on my mac.. what da! Proof: https://www.flickr.com/photos/semerda/48720232588/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/semerda/48720232588/

devin 7y ago

Seriously. It's absolute trash. I don't even want to think about how much time I've lost waiting for startup and teardown operations. Edit: Before you downvote me too heavily, go give the issues list a thorough read. Some of the problems are quite bad. Perhaps I could have said it in a nicer, but really, it's bad, and it's been bad for a good long while now.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

djsumdog 7y ago

I hate how the Docker team called it native. Docker for Mac/Windows still run in a hypervisor because so much of Docker is specific to Linux/cgroups. There was a FreeBSD port of Docker that attempted to implement a lot of the Docker API using zfs+jails but it went unmaintained and was never ported to the newer modular Docker implementation. You're always going to get that performance hit with the hypervisor layer there.

charles_f 7y ago
Docker for Windows is coming to use the WSL2, beta is already out.
- sigjuice 7y ago
  Calling it “Docker for Windows” is still highly inappropriate and misleading. It is super confusing.
- lojack 7y ago
  WSL 2 itself uses a hypervisor though, so this is sort of a moot point.
  - addicted 7y ago
    Is this correct? I thought the headline feature of WSL2 was that unlike WSL it didn't use the hypervisor. Edit: I looked it up. WSL2 continues to use a VM. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/
    - skissane 7y ago
      > Is this correct? I thought the headline feature of WSL2 was that unlike WSL it didn't use the hypervisor. No, the headline feature of WSL2 is it uses a real Linux kernel under a hypervisor, as opposed to WSL1's approach of a kernel driver running inside the NT kernel which partially emulates the Linux syscall API. > Edit: I looked it up. WSL2 continues to use a VM. More accurately, WSL2 starts using a VM, whereas WSL1 didn't. WSL2 runs the Linux kernel inside a VM. WSL1 runs Linux processes under the NT kernel (albeit as a special type of lightweight process called a picoprocess), with an emulation layer to translate Linux syscalls into NT kernel calls.

dawnerd 7y ago

I just recently switched to using vscode with the remote ssh plugin and setup an ubuntu vm on my windows machine and performance is like 100x better. Docker for mac is basically dead to me now, going to finish migrating my projects over to the VM and uninstall it from my laptop.

yoube 7y ago
Have you tried running the Vscode + Linux Subsystem + Docker on Windows stack? It's been pretty good so far (a good writeup on this is at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows-and-wsl-to-work-flawlessly https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows...)
- nickjj 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing that link, author here. Yeah I don't know why but on Windows the volume performance generally seems to be a lot better than Mac. I have nothing but good things to say even on 5 year old hardware. Massive web apps (including using webpack) are very very speedy with volumes with a number of different stacks (flask, rails, phoenix, webpack, node). I still use that set up years later and it's really solid.

EamonnMR 7y ago

For all of it's slowness, and constantly filling my hard drive with old builds because that's the workflow for some reason, it solves the real problem of MacOS constantly breaking packages. That alone makes it worth it.

james_s_tayler 7y ago
Yeah. I have to run docker system prune from time to time.

par 7y ago

Docker for Mac is a performance nightmare. It requires state of the art $3400 macbook pro to run properly, and even then still takes seconds (or 10s of seconds) to spin up, start local servers, etc. Build processes that would've run locally take 3-10x longer running on docker for mac. The whole thing can be quite frustrating.

month13 7y ago

Wondering if it's worthwhile just rolling my own vm and run whatever i want in there. I'd lose all the ability to bind to my host's ports, but would be able to control the daemon a bit better.