Docker: WARNING: Host is already in use by another container

We use docker to manage multiple instances of various tools on a server that we control. We have an Nginx server working as a reverse proxy that forwards all requests to the appropriate containers in the configuration. Sometimes, after updating the container images and recreating the containers, we get the error that ports 80 and 443 are already in use by another container. This problem can happen even if no other container asks for them.

The following excerpt demonstrates the problem as mentioned above.

tux@server:~/docker-compose$ docker-compose up -d --remove-orphans;
Recreating container_a ... 
Recreating container_a ... done
Recreating container_b   ... done
Recreating container_c          ... 
Recreating nginx_reverse_proxy        ... error
Recreating container_d          ... done
Recreating container_e       ... done
Recreating container_f  ... done
WARNING: Host is already in use by another container

ERROR: for nginx_reverse_proxy  Cannot start service nginx_reverse_proxy: driver failed programming external connectivity on endpoint nginx_reverse_proxy (5a790ed7e1b24aa36cb88cbd3f49d306efa8fe023bf5b3312655218319f23a35): Bind for 0.0.0.0:443 failed: port is already allocated

ERROR: for nginx_reverse_proxy  Cannot start service nginx_reverse_proxy: driver failed programming external connectivity on endpoint nginx_reverse_proxy (5a790ed7e1b24aa36cb88cbd3f49d306efa8fe023bf5b3312655218319f23a35): Bind for 0.0.0.0:443 failed: port is already allocated
ERROR: Encountered errors while bringing up the project.
tux@server:~/docker-compose$ sudo systemctl restart docker.socket docker.service;

To solve this issue, we had to restart two services using the systemctl command:

• docker.socket
• docker.service

Specifically, on an Ubuntu server, we used the following command:

sudo systemctl restart docker.socket docker.service;