Containers are created with `--rm`, so Docker removes them asynchronously after they stop.
The pre-start `docker rm` returns immediately while that removal is still in progress
(its error is suppressed), and the following `docker create --name` can fail with
"The container name ... is already in use".
This is easy to hit since systemd_service_manager switched its default restart mode to `all-at-once`:
many containers stop and start at the same time and Docker falls behind on removals.
The playbook then fails at "Restart systemd services needing restart at once",
even though the services recover on their own (`Restart=always`) a little later.
The external roles (MASH, devture) were hardened against this in 2026-03
(see mother-of-all-self-hosting/ansible-role-valkey@0ba79c0), but the roles in `roles/custom` never were.
This ports the same bounded cleanup loop to them: stop, force-remove,
and wait until Docker releases the name, failing explicitly after a timeout.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Part of adopting a uniform naming policy for bridge variables,
where the variable prefix matches the role directory name.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Slavi PantaleevandClaude Opus 5.5
AineandGitHub