Docker container with status "Dead" after consul healthcheck runs
Update March 2016: issue 9665 has just been closed by PR 21107 (for docker 1.11 possibly)
That should help avoid the "Driver aufs failed to remove root filesystem", "device or resource busy" problem.
Original answer May 2015
Dead is one if the container states, which is tested by Container.Start()
if container.removalInProgress || container.Dead { return fmt.Errorf("Container is marked for removal and cannot be started.")}It is set Dead when stopping fails, in order to prevent that container to be restarting.
Amongst the possible cause of failure, see container.Kill().
It means kill -15 and kill -9 are both failing.
// 1. Send a SIGTERMif err := container.killPossiblyDeadProcess(15); err != nil { logrus.Infof("Failed to send SIGTERM to the process, force killing") if err := container.killPossiblyDeadProcess(9); err != nil {That usually mean, as the OP mention, a busy device or resource, preventing the process to be killed.
There are a lot of bugs caused by EBUSY, in particular when devicemapper is used.
There is a tracker bug for all of the EBUSY related issues.see https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/5684#issuecomment-69052334