"read-only file system" error when pulling Docker image

Question

I am trying to install Splash for Scrapy.

According to its installation documentation, first of all Docker has to be installed. This has been successfully done.

Then I launch the Docker Quickstart Terminal and I try to follow the second step and pull the image. This is when the issue arrives:

$ docker pull scrapinghub/splash

After pulling, extracting and downloading; I receive the following message:

failed to register layer: Untar re-exec error: exit status 1: output: write /usr/share/fonts/truetype/arphic-bsmi00lp/bsmi00lp.ttf: read-only file system

Attempts

If I follow the documentation from GitHub:

$ docker run -p 8050:8050 scrapinghub/splash

I get the same error:

docker: open /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/tmp/GetImageBlob849866419: read-only file system

I also found some other threads talking about similar issues, but I did not find any solution, or at least I did not understand it.

• Error saving container to disk: read-only file system
• Read Only Error on yosemite MacOsX
• docker container filesystem became 'read-only' after running 5 months

I am not familiar with Virtual Machines or Virtual Boxes, so maybe I am just doing a very simple mistake.

Any ideas to solve the problem?

Additional details

$ docker info

Containers: 1
 Running: 0
 Paused: 0
 Stopped: 1
Images: 0
Server Version: 1.11.2
Storage Driver: aufs
 Root Dir: /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/aufs
 Backing Filesystem: extfs
 Dirs: 0
 Dirperm1 Supported: true
Logging Driver: json-file
Cgroup Driver: cgroupfs
Plugins: 
 Volume: local
 Network: host bridge null
Kernel Version: 4.4.12-boot2docker
Operating System: Boot2Docker 1.11.2 (TCL 7.1); HEAD : a6645c3 - Wed Jun  1 22:59:51 UTC 2016
OSType: linux
Architecture: x86_64
CPUs: 1
Total Memory: 1.955 GiB
Name: default
ID: QXKR:FRMB:NMLI:RLSF:K7PT:RXWE:44MP:6NQN:ISFO:GNWR:NBGO:AMNL
Docker Root Dir: /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker
Debug mode (client): false
Debug mode (server): true
 File Descriptors: 12
 Goroutines: 30
 System Time: 2016-06-10T15:09:55.50550284Z
 EventsListeners: 0
Registry: https://index.docker.io/v1/
Labels:
 provider=virtualbox

Answer 1

I cannot give an explanation of what was wrong, but I can explain what I did to make it work:

1. Restart.
2. Go through the steps of the documentation again.

Answer 2

This issue because of low storage in my pc, I cleaned up drive C: where docker was installed and restarted the docker

Answer 3

In my case, running docker-machine stop and then docker-machine start solved the problem.

I had to run eval $(docker-machine env) after, but that's it.

Answer 4

I got the error as well, the error message can be very misleading - the problem was not that I had a read-only file system, I had a FULL file system. Try checking that the place docker is trying to pull and extract to has enough room for the download.

Answer 5

It is possible that your docker stopped without your notice. Try to completely stop(close) it and re-open it again then try to reconnect.