[Bug]: Container is showing as running even after being killed

[vsarunas]

I have done the following

• I have searched the existing issues
• If possible, I've reproduced the issue using the 'main' branch of this project

Steps to reproduce

Hi @jglogan !

While testing #1041 using the kill script in #614, I had noticed that state of the container is not updated if it is killed via kill or launchctl bootout.

Start a container:

container run --name alpine-sleep-$(date +%H%M) --detach alpine sleep infinity

container list
ID                 IMAGE                            OS     ARCH   STATE    ADDR             CPUS  MEMORY   STARTED
alpine-sleep-1648  docker.io/library/alpine:latest  linux  arm64  running  192.168.64.2/24  4     1024 MB  2026-01-14T15:48:52Z

Kill:

launchctl list | grep "com.apple.container.*alpine-sleep" | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill

Container is showing as running:

container list
ID                 IMAGE                            OS     ARCH   STATE    ADDR             CPUS  MEMORY   STARTED
alpine-sleep-1648  docker.io/library/alpine:latest  linux  arm64  running  192.168.64.2/24  4     1024 MB  2026-01-14T15:48:52Z

Failing to be stopped:

2026-01-14T16:52:11+0100 error com.apple.container: [ContainerCommands] failed to stop container alpine-sleep-1648: internalError: "failed to stop container" (cause: "internalError: "failed to stop container alpine-sleep-1648 (cause: "interrupted: "XPC connection error: Connection invalid"")"")
Error: internalError: "stop failed for one or more containers alpine-sleep-1648"

Still showing as running:

 container list
ID                 IMAGE                            OS     ARCH   STATE    ADDR             CPUS  MEMORY   STARTED
alpine-sleep-1648  docker.io/library/alpine:latest  linux  arm64  running  192.168.64.2/24  4     1024 MB  2026-01-14T15:48:52Z

State will be updated only after full system stop:

container system stop
container system start

Current behavior

Container is shown as running; cannot be stopped and continues to be shown as running until container system stop.

Expected behavior

Update container system state if the container exited outside of container.

Environment

- OS: macOS 26.2
- Xcode: 26.2
- Container: container CLI version 0.7.1-49-gdbec1db (build: release, commit: dbec1db)

Relevant log output

N/A

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[Ronitsabhaya75]

Hi @vsarunas ! Thanks for the detailed report.

Root Cause:

• When containers are killed externally, the XPC connection is lost
• The wait handler throws .interrupted error, preventing state cleanup
  Fix:

Modified

• ContainersService.swift (lines 364-376) to catch XPC connection errors
• Now treats connection loss as container exit (code 137 = SIGKILL)
• Allows normal cleanup flow to update state to stopped

[jglogan]

For comparison here's what shows up in the logs if I kill the com.apple.Virtualization.VirtualMachine process:

% container system logs -f
Warning! Running debug build. Performance may be degraded.
Filtering the log data using "subsystem ==[cd] "com.apple.container""
Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity             PID    TTL  
2026-01-15 08:06:19.968901-0800 0xd815e4   Error       0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] WaitHandler for 8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b threw error internalError: "failed to wait on process" (cause: "unavailable (14): Transport became inactive") [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.974957-0800 0xd815e4   Info        0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] init process exited with: ExitStatus(exitCode: -1, exitedAt: 2026-01-15 16:06:19 +0000) [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.979110-0800 0xd815e4   Error       0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] failed during guest cleanup: internalError: "failed to dial agent" (cause: "Error Domain=VZErrorDomain Code=3 "The virtual machine is no longer live." UserInfo={NSLocalizedFailure=Invalid virtual machine state., NSLocalizedFailureReason=The virtual machine is no longer live.}") [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.979483-0800 0xd815e4   Error       0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] failed to delete init process: internalError: "failed to delete process" (cause: "unavailable (14): The connection was dropped and a reconnect was not configured") [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.979513-0800 0xd815e4   Error       0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] failed to stop VM: invalidState: "vm is not running" [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.979713-0800 0xd815e4   Error       0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] failed to stop container during cleanup: internalError: "failed to dial agent" (cause: "Error Domain=VZErrorDomain Code=3 "The virtual machine is no longer live." UserInfo={NSLocalizedFailure=Invalid virtual machine state., NSLocalizedFailureReason=The virtual machine is no longer live.}") [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.979725-0800 0xd815e4   Info        0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] closing forwarders [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.979746-0800 0xd815e4   Info        0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] closed forwarders [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.981745-0800 0xd80985   Info        0x0                  49380  0    container-network-vmnet: [com.apple.container:NetworkVmnetHelper] released attachments [id=default] [hostname=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b.test.]
2026-01-15 08:06:19.988520-0800 0xd80987   Info        0x0                  49375  0    container-apiserver: [com.apple.container:APIServer] container 8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b finished in exit monitor, exit code ExitStatus(exitCode: -1, exitedAt: 2026-01-15 16:06:19 +0000)
2026-01-15 08:06:19.989123-0800 0xd80987   Info        0x0                  49375  0    container-apiserver: [com.apple.container:APIServer] Handling container 8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b exit. Code ExitStatus(exitCode: -1, exitedAt: 2026-01-15 16:06:19 +0000)
2026-01-15 08:06:19.989230-0800 0xd80987   Info        0x0                  49375  0    container-apiserver: [com.apple.container:APIServer] Shutting down sandbox service for 8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b
2026-01-15 08:06:19.990643-0800 0xd81a39   Info        0x0                  53540  0    container-runtime-linux: [com.apple.container:RuntimeLinuxHelper] `shutdown` xpc handler [uuid=8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b]
2026-01-15 08:06:20.052685-0800 0xd80987   Info        0x0                  49375  0    container-apiserver: [com.apple.container:APIServer] Deregistered sandbox service for 8fe16aad-503e-4e26-a3af-928ee8d1ec2b

[jglogan]

Here's the log output when killing container-runtime-linux process:

% container system logs -f
Warning! Running debug build. Performance may be degraded.
Filtering the log data using "subsystem ==[cd] "com.apple.container""
Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity             PID    TTL  
2026-01-15 08:12:37.231076-0800 0xd83bb8   Error       0x0                  49375  0    container-apiserver: [com.apple.container:APIServer] WaitHandler for 2bcd1454-0c39-4ff1-9162-7b37ccc6af16 threw error internalError: "failed to wait for process 2bcd1454-0c39-4ff1-9162-7b37ccc6af16 in container 2bcd1454-0c39-4ff1-9162-7b37ccc6af16" (cause: "interrupted: "XPC connection error: Connection interrupted"")
2026-01-15 08:12:37.231294-0800 0xd83bb8   Info        0x0                  49375  0    container-apiserver: [com.apple.container:APIServer] Handling container 2bcd1454-0c39-4ff1-9162-7b37ccc6af16 exit. Code ExitStatus(exitCode: -1, exitedAt: 2026-01-15 16:12:37 +0000)
2026-01-15 08:12:37.231368-0800 0xd83bb8   Info        0x0                  49375  0    container-apiserver: [com.apple.container:APIServer] Shutting down sandbox service for 2bcd1454-0c39-4ff1-9162-7b37ccc6af16