moby: Cannot create docker network: "could not find an available predefined network"

Output of docker version:

Client:
 Version:      1.12.0-rc2
 API version:  1.24
 Go version:   go1.6.2
 Git commit:   906eacd
 Built:        Fri Jun 17 20:45:29 2016
 OS/Arch:      linux/amd64

Server:
 Version:      1.12.0-rc2
 API version:  1.24
 Go version:   go1.6.2
 Git commit:   906eacd
 Built:        Fri Jun 17 20:45:29 2016
 OS/Arch:      linux/amd64

Output of docker info:

Containers: 5
 Running: 0
 Paused: 0
 Stopped: 5
Images: 178
Server Version: 1.12.0-rc2
Storage Driver: overlay
 Backing Filesystem: extfs
Logging Driver: json-file
Cgroup Driver: cgroupfs
Plugins:
 Volume: local
 Network: null host bridge overlay
Swarm: inactive
Runtimes: default
Default Runtime: default
Security Options: seccomp
Kernel Version: 4.4.11-23.53.amzn1.x86_64
Operating System: Amazon Linux AMI 2016.03
OSType: linux
Architecture: x86_64
CPUs: 2
Total Memory: 3.679 GiB
Name: ip-10-0-99-26
ID: EHXQ:TLQP:HDFH:FY3W:ZADZ:PCUE:6GHO:NT5D:VAD3:G7J7:G5S6:7WXO
Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker
Debug Mode (client): false
Debug Mode (server): false
Username: saada
Registry: https://index.docker.io/v1/
Insecure Registries:
 127.0.0.0/8

Additional environment details (AWS, VirtualBox, physical, etc.):

$ uname -r
4.4.11-23.53.amzn1.x86_64

Steps to reproduce the issue:

create a docker network

Describe the results you received: Failing command

$ docker network create test
Error response from daemon: failed to parse pool request for address space "LocalDefault" pool "" subpool "": could not find an available predefined network

Docker daemon log output in /var/log/docker

time="2016-06-26T23:59:24.698380120Z" level=error msg="Handler for POST /v1.22/networks/create returned error: failed to parse pool request for address space \"LocalDefault\" pool \"\" subpool \"\": could not find an available predefined network"

Describe the results you expected:

docker network create test
d992f3556b03d0b780eff1e289650e43533140eef9d38620e62d94b5efa28b89

Additional information you deem important (e.g. issue happens only occasionally): I’m creating a lot of networks since this is on a CI server. The issue tends to happen once in a while and I end up fixing it via rm -rf /var/lib/docker/network/files and restart the daemon. This workaround doesn’t always work and is flaky.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 8 years ago
Comments: 25 (11 by maintainers)

Links to this issue

Starting lots of Docker containers occasionally causes address pool exhaustion - Stack Overflow

Commits related to this issue

Use Docker Compose to bring down services Docker Compose creates networks within the context of Docker in order to provide a communication mechanism between services. Because Docker Compose was respo... — committed to raster-foundry/raster-foundry by deleted user 8 years ago
Use Docker Compose to bring down services Docker Compose creates networks within the context of Docker in order to provide a communication mechanism between services. Because Docker Compose was respo... — committed to raster-foundry/raster-foundry by deleted user 8 years ago
Use Docker Compose to bring down services Docker Compose creates networks within the context of Docker in order to provide a communication mechanism between services. Because Docker Compose was respo... — committed to raster-foundry/raster-foundry by deleted user 8 years ago

Most upvoted comments

It works for me:

kill -9 $(pidof openvpn) docker-compose up -d

Now, you can run openvpn again.

+22

charliejuc on Dec 12, 2016

I’ve just hit this wall as well.

Some testing;

rhel7, docker 1.12.1 = 10 “bridge” networks
rhel7, docker 1.10.3 = 31 “bridge” networks
rancheros, docker 1.12.1 = 32 “bridge” networks

Is there anyway to allocate a bigger network for docker to pick from?

xeor on Sep 21, 2016

@thalesfsp use: docker network ls - to list networks docker network rm - to remove network

sswierczyna on Sep 7, 2016

You can remove all unused networks with docker network prune

reduardo7 on Apr 12, 2017

I found this helpful: https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/down/

docker-compose down which is equivalent of a stop, rm, and cleans up networks for you. I couldn’t figure out how to setup the subnet correctly. It would be great to have some documentation on how that works.

saada on Jun 30, 2016

@saada When user does not specify --subnet during network creation, the default ipam driver tries to auto-assign a subnet from a list of predefined pools, given it does not overlap with any route on your host. There are around 31 predefined pools.

How many networks did you have when the issue was encountered ? I am trying to see if this is a legitimate failure, whether the limit was or not reached.

aboch on Jun 27, 2016