Docker [for mac] file system became read-only which breaks almost all features of docker

Question

My Docker ran into an error state, where I cannot use it anymore.

output of docker system info:

Containers: 14
Running: 2
Paused: 0
Stopped: 12
Images: 61
Server Version: 18.03.1-ce
Storage Driver: overlay2
Backing Filesystem: extfs
Supports d_type: true
Native Overlay Diff: true
Logging Driver: json-file
Cgroup Driver: cgroupfs
Plugins:
Volume: local
Network: bridge host macvlan null overlay
Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file logentries splunk syslog
Swarm: error
NodeID:
Error: open /var/lib/docker/swarm/worker/tasks.db: read-only file system
Is Manager: false
Node Address: 192.168.65.3
Runtimes: runc
Default Runtime: runc
Init Binary: docker-init
containerd version: 773c489c9c1b21a6d78b5c538cd395416ec50f88
runc version: 4fc53a81fb7c994640722ac585fa9ca548971871
init version: 949e6fa
Security Options:
seccomp
Profile: default
Kernel Version: 4.9.87-linuxkit-aufs
Operating System: Docker for Mac
OSType: linux
Architecture: x86_64
CPUs: 2
Total Memory: 1.952GiB
Name: linuxkit-025000000001
ID: MCSC:SFXH:R3JC:NU4D:OJ5V:K4B5:LPMJ:2BFL:LHT3:LYCI:XKY2:DTE6
Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker
Debug Mode (client): false
Debug Mode (server): false
HTTP Proxy: docker.for.mac.http.internal:3128
HTTPS Proxy: docker.for.mac.http.internal:3129
Registry: https://index.docker.io/v1/
Labels:
Experimental: false
Insecure Registries:
127.0.0.0/8
Live Restore Enabled: false

This behaviour occured, after I built the following Dockerfile:

FROM perl:5.20

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y libsoap-lite-perl \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

RUN cpan SOAP::LITE

the error message when I try to build an image or run a container or remove an image is always similar to this:

Error: open /var/lib/docker/swarm/worker/tasks.db: read-only file system

for example if I try to execute this command:

docker container run -it perl:5.20 bash

I get this error:

docker: Error response from daemon: mkdir /var/lib/docker/overlay2/1b966e163e500a8c78a64e8d0f14984b091c1c5fe188a60b8bd030672d3138d9-init: read-only file system.

How can I reset my docker so these errors go away?

Solution

Go to your docker for mac Icon in the top right, click on it and then click Restart. After that Docker works as expected.

This seems to be an temporary issue since I cannot reproduce it after restarting docker. My guess is that I had an network communication breakdown while docker tried to download and install the packages in the Dockerfile.