Docker Container exited with code 137
When attempting to fire up a bunch of docker containers using docker-compose
on a Mac, one of the containers was randomly exiting with the exit code 137. The message would look something like this:
container_name exited with code 137
My first reaction was to try to quickly run docker exec -it container-id /bin/bash
and then take a look at the logs, but before I was quick enough to do that I decided to look into exit code 137.
As it turns out this code is commonly associated with Docker for Mac not having enough RAM allocated to it. More specifically the Linux OOM (out of memory) Killer, kicked in and terminated the process.
So it is an easy fix, go to the Docker Menu and select Preferences then the Advanced tab and increase the Memory.

My docker memory was set to 2.0 GB (perhaps the default), I increased it to 4.0 GB and problem solved.
You may also be able to get around this problem by setting the --memory
limit when starting a container, or if you are using docker compose, you can do something like this in your docker-compose.yml
file:
version: '3' services: your-service-name: image: image-name:tag deploy: resources: limits: memory: 50M reservations: memory: 20M
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Tweet Follow @pfreitagDocker Container exited with code 137 was first published on January 18, 2018.
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Comments
You saved my day with your solution.
I was trying to run druid in docker and received this "container_name exited with code 137" many times. With your solution, the problem went away.
Thanks!
Xingsheng
Thanks to you, I solved this problem.
I have this mysterious problem for days. With the same conf other VM run well. Turns out it's a RAM problem. Solved after resizing from 2 to 4 GB.
After latest docker update on mac the settings were reset causing this issue for me.