Table of Contents

,

Deleting images from private docker registry

Your registry has to have set REGISTRY_STORAGE_DELETE_ENABLED variable.

  1. get all repos 
    curl -s localhost:52000/v2/_catalog | jq
  2. get all tags in repo 
    curl -s localhost:52000/v2/test/tags/list | jq
  3. get digest of test repo with image tagged as test33 
    curl -s -I --request HEAD --header "Accept: application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json" localhost:52000/v2/test/manifests/test33 | grep ^Docker-Content-Digest | cut -d: -f2,3

Now you can:

Delete the blob identified by name and digest 

curl --request DELETE --header "Accept: application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json" localhost:52000/v2/test/blobs/<digest>

or

Delete the manifest or tag 

curl --request DELETE --header "Accept: application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json" localhost:52000/v2/test/manifests/<digest>

You have to use the hash type in digest like sha256:FEWIoj3242ji… 

curl --request DELETE --header "Accept: application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json" localhost:52000/v2/test/manifests/sha256:FEWIoj3242ji

However, delete only removes references within the repositories. To recover space you will need to garbage collect. Example when running registry directly on server: 

docker run --rm registry:2 garbage-collect [--dry-run] /etc/docker/registry/config.yml

Example when running registry as a docker container: 

docker exec -it docker-registry sh # enter container first
/bin/registry garbage-collect [--dry-run] /etc/docker/registry/config.yml

Tested on

See also

References