Add ContainerStateRemoving

When Libpod removes a container, there is the possibility that
removal will not fully succeed. The most notable problems are
storage issues, where the container cannot be removed from
c/storage.

When this occurs, we were faced with a choice. We can keep the
container in the state, appearing in `podman ps` and available for
other API operations, but likely unable to do any of them as it's
been partially removed. Or we can remove it very early and clean
up after it's already gone. We have, until now, used the second
approach.

The problem that arises is intermittent problems removing
storage. We end up removing a container, failing to remove its
storage, and ending up with a container permanently stuck in
c/storage that we can't remove with the normal Podman CLI, can't
use the name of, and generally can't interact with. A notable
cause is when Podman is hit by a SIGKILL midway through removal,
which can consistently cause `podman rm` to fail to remove
storage.

We now add a new state for containers that are in the process of
being removed, ContainerStateRemoving. We set this at the
beginning of the removal process. It notifies Podman that the
container cannot be used anymore, but preserves it in the DB
until it is fully removed. This will allow Remove to be run on
these containers again, which should successfully remove storage
if it fails.

Fixes #3906

Signed-off-by: Matthew Heon <mheon@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/libpod/define/containerstate.go b/libpod/define/containerstate.go
index ab2527b3e..e7d258e21 100644
--- a/libpod/define/containerstate.go
+++ b/libpod/define/containerstate.go
@@ -25,6 +25,9 @@ const (
 	// ContainerStateExited indicates the the container has stopped and been
 	// cleaned up
 	ContainerStateExited ContainerStatus = iota
+	// ContainerStateRemoving indicates the container is in the process of
+	// being removed.
+	ContainerStateRemoving ContainerStatus = iota
 )
 
 // ContainerStatus returns a string representation for users
@@ -45,6 +48,8 @@ func (t ContainerStatus) String() string {
 		return "paused"
 	case ContainerStateExited:
 		return "exited"
+	case ContainerStateRemoving:
+		return "removing"
 	}
 	return "bad state"
 }
@@ -67,6 +72,8 @@ func StringToContainerStatus(status string) (ContainerStatus, error) {
 		return ContainerStatePaused, nil
 	case ContainerStateExited.String():
 		return ContainerStateExited, nil
+	case ContainerStateRemoving.String():
+		return ContainerStateRemoving, nil
 	default:
 		return ContainerStateUnknown, errors.Wrapf(ErrInvalidArg, "unknown container state: %s", status)
 	}