lxd-delete-containers

The Python script in this repo can delete all LXD containers and images on a machine. This script was inspired by the following Docker command that can delete all stopped containers:

docker rm $(docker ps -f status=exited -q)

As you may be already aware, the above command finds stopped docker containers and deletes them. As of now, a similar command cannot be run in LXD since it cannot list containers in "quiet" mode (-q in the command above - where only numerical IDs of containers are listed, allowing them to be sent to the rm command). It is also not possible to delete all LXC containers using lxc delete *. This can be problematic if you have a large number of containers that are launched and not stopped on a machine, where you have to manually run the container delete command for each container (E.g.: lxc delete awaited-mallard).

The script delete_all_lxd_containers.py in this repo can delete ALL containers (running or stopped) and/or ALL images on a machine. Whether containers, images or both are deleted depends on what options are enabled. The script uses modules from the Python Standard Library, mitigating the need to install additional modules for successful execution.

Enabling the container delete option is the equivalent to running the following command for each container:

lxc delete --force <container_name> 

The --force option above forces the removal of running containers.

Enabling the image delete option is the equivalent of running the following command for each image:

lxc image delete <image_fingerprint>

This script has been tested on Ubuntu 16.04 & 18.04 with snap installed LXD versions 3.3 and above.

Requirements

• Python3
• Ability to run lxc without sudo

Instructions

1. Clone this repo and cd into the cloned directory.
2. Make sure you have execute permissions on delete_all_lxd_containers.py. You can set this for the current user by running: chmod u+x delete_all_lxd_containers.py
3. View available options: ./delete_all_lxd_containers.py --help
4. Delete containers: ./delete_all_lxd_containers.py -c
5. Delete images: ./delete_all_lxd_containers.py -i

Alternatively, you can run this script without cloning the repo using curl. For example, the following command runs the script and displays it's help message:

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ilhaan/lxd-delete-containers/master/delete_all_lxd_containers.py | python3 - -h 

Alternatives

The following commands will accomplish the same thing this script does, without needing Python or this script installed:

• delete all containers: lxc delete $(lxc list -c n --format csv)
• delete all images: lxc image delete $(lxc image list -c f --format csv)