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navsection: admin
-title: Controlling container reuse
+title: Preventing container reuse
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SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-3.0
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-This page describes how an admin can control container reuse using the @arv@ command. This can be utilized to avoid reusing a completed container without disabling reuse for the corresponding steps in affected workflows. For example, if a container exited successfully but produced bad output, it may not be feasible to update the workflow immediately. Meanwhile, changing the state of the container from @Complete@ to @Cancelled@ will prevent it from being used in subsequent workflows.
+Sometimes a container exited successfully but produced bad output, and re-running the workflow will cause it to re-use the bad container instead of running a new container. One way to deal with this is to re-run the entire workflow with reuse disabled. Another way is for the workflow author to tweak the input data or workflow so that on re-run it produces a distinct container request. However, for large or complex workflows both these options may be impractical.
-If a container is in the @Complete@ state, the following @arv@ command will change its state to @Cancelled@, where @xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@ is the @UUID@ of the container:
+To prevent an individual container from being reused in later workflows, an admin can manually change the state of the bad container record from @Complete@ to @Cancelled@. The following @arv@ command demonstrates how change a container state to @Cancelled@, where @xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@ is the @UUID@ of the container:
<pre>arv container update -u xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -c '{"state":"Cancelled"}'</pre>
-
-Use the following command to list all containers that exited with 0 and were then cancelled:
-
-<pre>arv container list --filters='[["state", "=", "Cancelled"], ["exit_code", "=", 0]]'</pre>See the "arv CLI tool overview":{{site.baseurl}}/sdk/cli/index.html for more details about using the @arv@ command.