Docker daemon not starting, even after reinstalling docker on ubuntu 18.04

Question

I'm getting the following errors, even immediately after sudo apt remove docker; sudo apt install docker sudo apt remove docker; sudo apt install docker :

$ sudo service docker restart
Job for docker.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status docker.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
$ systemctl status docker.service
● docker.service - LSB: Create lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers.
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/docker; generated)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2019-12-26 11:37:52 PST; 8s ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 28702 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/docker start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 3450 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

The command jouralctl -xe shows no new entries, and sudo systemctl list-unit-files shows docker.service as generated . I looked at a bunch of related questions on SO, but they seemed different issues. The closest was Trying a quick cluster deployment with Docker:Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running? , but that issue was resolved via re-installation.

What could my issue be, or what should the next diagnostic steps be?

Answer 1

Are you really sure that docker package is what you want?

$ apt-cache search docker | grep ^'docker '
docker - System tray for KDE3/GNOME2 docklet applications

Actual docker package name depends on the Docker version and source, which you want to use. Good start will be recent docker-ce from Docker: https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/

When you have docker installed correctly, then you may use dockerd for debugging: https://docs.docker.com/config/daemon/