Delete an image manifest by digest from a self-hosted (CNCF distribution) v2 registry and reclaim space with garbage collection
domain: distribution.github.io · 10 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
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Documented steps
Confirm the registry has deletion enabled — CNCF distribution's default config disables it: set in config.yml under storage: delete: enabled: true, or via env var REGISTRY_STORAGE_DELETE_ENABLED=true.
Obtain a suitably scoped Bearer token as required by your registry's auth setup (pull to resolve, plus delete/push rights per your auth configuration).
Resolve the tag to a digest first — deletion requires a digest ('For deletes, reference must be a digest or the delete will fail'): curl -sI -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -H "Accept: application/vnd.oci.image.manifest.v1+json" https://myregistry.example.com/v2/myrepo/manifests/mytag (copy the Docker-Content-Digest response header)
Expect 202 Accepted with an empty body on success (per both the OCI distribution spec and CNCF distribution API docs); a 404 means the name/reference was not found, and a 405 Method Not Allowed means deletion is disabled in the registry config.
Verify removal: a GET/HEAD to /v2/myrepo/manifests/sha256:<digest> (and any tag that pointed at it) should now return 404.
Deletion only removes the reference, not the underlying blobs on disk; reclaim space separately with the registry's garbage collector, ideally with the registry stopped or read-only ('stop-the-world garbage collection'): bin/registry garbage-collect [--dry-run] [--delete-untagged] /path/to/config.yml
Note: the OCI distribution spec defines DELETE /v2/<name>/manifests/<tag> (tag deletion) only as OPTIONAL — CNCF distribution supports deleting by digest only, so don't rely on tag-only DELETE working against a given registry.
Hosted registries differ: Docker Hub's published OpenAPI defines only GET and HEAD on the tag resource — no DELETE; hosted registries generally use their own account-scoped APIs or dashboards for tag/repository deletion instead of the raw v2 DELETE endpoint.
Attempting DELETE by tag against CNCF distribution fails: 'For deletes, reference must be a digest or the delete will fail' — always resolve to the digest first, even though the OCI spec separately allows an optional tag-delete endpoint.
storage.delete.enabled defaults to false; deleting against a registry that hasn't enabled it returns 405 Method Not Allowed (the spec allows 400 or 405 when manifest deletion is disabled).
Successful delete returns 202 Accepted, not 200/204, with an empty body.
Deleting a manifest does not free disk space immediately; blobs merely become unreferenced. You must separately run 'registry garbage-collect', and the docs warn to run it with the registry read-only or stopped to avoid corrupting images uploaded mid-run.
If the repository itself does not exist, the response MUST be 404 Not Found (distinct from a missing digest within an existing repo).
Deleting a manifest triggers a scan of every tag in the repository to update tag references (see the tag.concurrencylimit config note) — large repos can see slow/expensive deletes, especially on S3-backed storage.
Hosted SaaS registries generally do not expose the raw v2 DELETE endpoint for public use — use the vendor's own dashboard or account API instead of assuming the standard registry DELETE works.
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