Docker Container Restart Loop: 72 Hours of Hell

The memory leak that made me question every career decision I'd ever made

[This is a paid post. Subscribe to get full debug workflows, exact commands, and the analysis process I use for every container issue.]

Sunday. 11 PM.

I’m three beers in, watching some forgettable Netflix show, when my phone starts vibrating.

Not the “hey you got a mention” vibrate. The “your production is on fire and everyone knows it” kind.

Slack. PagerDuty. Email. SMS. All at once.

“checkout-api containers restarting. Users can’t complete purchases.”

I open my laptop. The container’s been restarting every 4 minutes for the last hour.

Someone deployed at 6 PM. I wasn’t on-call. Wasn’t my deploy. Wasn’t my problem.

Except now it is. Because the guy who deployed went camping. No cell service. Won’t be back until Wednesday.

I pour the beers down the sink and crack my knuckles.

This is going to be a long night.