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>

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

• docker registry image 01.2024

• Private docker registry

• https://github.com/distribution/distribution/issues/1579
• https://distribution.github.io/distribution/spec/api/
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39801094/how-to-delete-an-image-from-a-private-docker-registry