I got confused by this also. There are two commands relevant here:

docker run Run a command in a new container

docker start Start one or more stopped containers

That means you have already started a container in the past with the parameter docker run --name registry-v1 ....

You need to delete that first before you can re-create a container with the same name with docker rm registry-v1. When that container is sill running you need to stop it first before you can delete it with docker stop registry-v1. Or simply choose a different name for the new container.

To get a list of existing containers and their names simply invoke docker ps -a.

Here what i did, it works fine.

step 1:(it lists docker container with its name)

docker ps -a

step 2:

docker rm name_of_the_docker_container

You have 2 options to fix this...

1. 
   

   Remove previous container using that name, with the command docker rm $(docker ps -aq --filter name=myContainerName)

   
   
   

   OR

   
   


2. Rename current container to a different name i.e change this portion --name registry-v1 to something like --name myAnotherContainerName
   

You are getting this error because that container name ( i.e registry-v1) was used by another container in the past...even though that container may have exited i.e (currently not in use).

Just to explain what others are saying (it took me some time to understand): simply put when you see this error, it means you already have a container and what you have to do is run it. While intuitively docker run is supposed to run, it doesn't. The command docker run is used to only START a container for the very first time. To run an existing container what you need is docker start $container-name. So much for asking developers to create meaningful/intuitive commands.

You can remove it with command sudo docker rm YOUR_CONTAINER_ID, then run a new container with sudo docker run ...;
or restart an existing container with sudo docker start YOUR_CONTAINER_ID

Cause

A container with the same name is still existing.

Solution

To reuse the same container name, delete the existing container by:

docker rm <container name>

Explanation

Containers can exist in following states, during which the container name can't be used for another container:

• created


• restarting


• running


• paused


• exited


• dead

You can see containers in running state by using :

docker ps

To show containers in all states and find out if a container name is taken, use:

docker ps -a

When you are building a new image you often want to run a new container each time and with the same name. I found the easiest way was to start the container with the --rm option:

--rm        Automatically remove the container when it exits

e.g.

docker run --name my-micro-service --rm <image>

Sadly it's used almost randomly in the examples from the docs

I'm just learning docker and this got me as well. I stopped the container with that name already and therefore I thought I could run a new container with that name.

Not the case. Just because the container is stopped, doesn't mean it can't be started again, and it keeps all the same parameters that it was created with (including the name).

when I ran docker ps -a that's when I saw all the dummy test containers I created while I was playing around.

No problem, since I don't want those any more I just did docker rm containername at which point my new container was allowed to run with the old name.

Ah, and now that I finish writing this answer, I see Slawosz's comment on Walt Howard's answer above suggesting the use of docker ps -a