[docs-scanner] Conflicting guidance on when to use overlay2 vs containerd
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Assessment
- Difficulty
- 2/5
- Estimated time
- 1-3 hours
- Newbie friendliness
- 75/100
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Clarity
- Clearly specified
- Activity status
- Active
- Domain
- documentation
Research direction
The issue points to two specific files: content/manuals/engine/storage/drivers/select-storage-driver.md and content/manuals/engine/storage/drivers/overlayfs-driver.md. Start by reading these files to understand the current conflicting guidance. Then, draft a clear decision section for the select-storage-driver page, explaining when to use overlay2 vs containerd, and update the overlayfs-driver page to clarify its statement. Verify the changes by building the docs locally or checking the rendered output.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
Files:
content/manuals/engine/storage/drivers/select-storage-driver.mdcontent/manuals/engine/storage/drivers/overlayfs-driver.md
Issue
The select-storage-driver page says:
For systems using classic storage drivers,
overlay2provides broad compatibility across Linux distributions. Use Docker volumes for write-heavy workloads instead of relying on writing data to the container's writable layer.
This guidance presents overlay2 as a recommended choice "for systems using classic storage drivers," but doesn't explain when or why a user would choose to use classic storage drivers instead of the containerd image store (the default for 29.0+).
Meanwhile, overlayfs-driver.md says:
In most cases you should use the
overlay2storage driver - it's not required to use thebtrfsstorage driver simply because your system uses Btrfs as its root filesystem.
But then immediately contradicts this with:
Docker Engine 29.0 and later uses the containerd image store by default. The
overlay2driver is a legacy storage driver that is superseded by theoverlayfscontainerd snapshotter.
Why this matters
A reader following these pages will be confused about whether they should be using overlay2 or the containerd image store. The guidance says "in most cases you should use overlay2" but then says it's "legacy" and "superseded." There's no clear decision tree for when to use which system.
Suggested fix
Add a clear decision section to select-storage-driver.md that explains:
- Docker Engine 29.0+ uses containerd image store by default for fresh installations (recommended)
- Classic storage drivers (including overlay2) are still available for:
- Systems upgraded from earlier versions that haven't migrated
- Specific compatibility requirements (list them if any exist)
- How to determine which system you're currently using
- When and why you might need to stay on classic storage drivers vs migrating to containerd
Remove or update the "in most cases you should use overlay2" statement in overlayfs-driver.md to clarify it only applies to users who must use classic storage drivers.
Found by nightly documentation quality scanner
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Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
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