How to move the default /var/lib/docker to another directory for Docker on Linux?

Before you get started, make sure to backup your Droplet so that in case that anything goes wrong, you could revert back to a backup!

Once you have your backup in place, follow these steps here:

• SSH to your server

• Make sure that Docker is stopped:

sudo systemctl stop docker

After that, make sure that Docker is not running with the following commands:

sudo systemctl status docker

If you see that Docker is not running, then you could proceed. Another way of checking if there are any Docker processes is by using the ps command:

ps faux | grep -i docker

• After that, copy the /var/lib/docker/ Docker directory to the new location. Let’s say that we want to put the files in a folder called /home/docker. To do so, first create the folder:

mkdir /home/docker

Then using the rsync command transfer the files over:

rsync -avxP /var/lib/docker/ /home/docker

Note: this might take a while depending on the size of your images. If your folder is too large you might want to run the rsync command in a screen session to avoid your connection being dropped and interrupting the transfer.

• Next, you need to update the Docker unit file. To do that, using your favorite text editor, edit the following file:

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/docker.service

Find the following line:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd -H fd:// --containerd=/run/containerd/containerd.sock

And change it to:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd -g /home/docker -H fd:// --containerd=/run/containerd/containerd.sock

Then reload the systemd daemons:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

And finally, start Docker:

systemctl start docker

Finally, to confirm if your images are being loaded from the new path, you can inspect one of your images:

Find an image id:

docker images

Inspect the image and look for the WorkDir:

docker inspect image_id | grep WorkDir

I hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby