Jenkins pipeline with Docker image is eating up disk space (Ubuntu)

Question

I'm running a Jenkins pipeline on Ubuntu 16.04, using a Docker image to run unit tests on my Android project. I configured Jenkins to only save 1 build at a time and discard older builds (the vps Im using only have 40GB of disk space). But each time I build, the var/lib/docker/aufs/diff folder grows by 500Mb~ and this seems to be impossible to clean up.

Would be thankful for any tips on how I can solve this problem!

Answer 1

It seems like your previous builds are being untagged when the new tests are being built.

To save space, you can run the following command to your Jenkins pipeline to remove untagged images after the test finishes running

docker rmi $(docker images | grep '<none>' | awk '{print $3}')

A break down of the commands:

docker rmi — removes image(s)

docker images — list images -> Pipe to grep and list all untagged images with tags <none> -> use awk to list all untagged image IDs

If you are actually renaming your image name every time the test runs, just change the grep value to the name of your image. i.e.

docker rmi $(docker images | grep '<IMAGE_NAME>' | awk '{print $3}')

Answer 2

Do you know which folder is Jenkins using to build yor pipeline? I think you need to pass a local directory (host) as a volume to your container