Docker 29 increased minimum API version, breaks Traefik reverse proxy

[bluepuma77]

Please note that Docker 29 increased the minimum required API version.

It’s currently not compatible with Traefik Docker configuration discovery:

"Error response from daemon: client version 1.24 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.44, > please upgrade your client to a newer version"

So if you use Traefik with Docker, you should wait with a Docker update until Traefik has caught up, see Traefik issue.

[ferra003 (Mattia Ferraioli)]

---

Hi, I encountered the same issue in my Laravel project. When I run my PHPUnit tests, PhpStorm IDE returns the following error:

com.github.dockerjava.api.exception.DockerException: Status 400: client version 1.24 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.44, please upgrade your client to a newer version. To fix it, change the project interpreter or check settings.

Please note that my Docker version was 29.0.0, with API version 1.52.
This issue also broke Portainer.

To resolve it, I had to downgrade Docker to 28.5.2 with API version 1.51.0.

Please, Docker team, address this issue as soon as possible.

[bluepuma77]

It’s not Docker to address the issue, but all clients to finally catch up to the Docker API version.

[rimelek (Ákos Takács)]

Docker CE 29 is just Release Candidate at the moment, so there is still time until stable for Portainer and Traefik to support it, but I don’t know how much, since Moby 29.0.0 is already out. Even after a stable new major Docker CE is released, I would not update right away. But definitely not to RC When breaking changes are introduced, any application relying on those needs time to be updated. In case of Docker, it means anything that communicates with the Docker API or uses any Docker command.

EDIT:

I see the package as stable, but it is not mentioned in the documentation. So it is indeed releases, I was wrong.

[ferra003 (Mattia Ferraioli)]

Bro, my docker API version was 1.52, as I stated, so it was not client problem. The problem seems to be related to the docker sock connection. Which broke after docker update.

[pkernevez]

Hi,

We spent hours on the same subject with a fully different context.
Java testing with Test Container in our CI with ArcRunner. During the morning the dind that is used in the arc-runner has been upgraded to 29.0.0 and broke all our runners.
Test Container is using docker-java 3.5.1 (03-2025) to connect to docker socket.
It fails with the same error message:

UnixSocketClientProviderStrategy: failed with exception BadRequestException (Status 400: {"message":"client version 1.32 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.44, please upgrade your client to a newer version"}

May be some fields used for the API detection are missing, but I think the ecosystem impacted by this change will be large.

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

@ferra003

Bro, my docker API version was 1.52, as I stated, so it was not client problem

Of what?

The error message you shared in your first post shows that the framework used as docker client uses the api version 1.24. Is it safe to assume that this is an error thrown by the PhpStorm IDE itself?

@bluepuma77

It’s not Docker to address the issue, but all clients to finally catch up to the Docker API version.

The minimum supported api version is 1.44 now (which, btw, the error message from your first post indicates as well). It was introduced with Docker v25 on 2024-01-19 and is supported up the current v29.

It is like @bluepuma77 wrote: the client frameworks need to catch up to a supported Docker API version.

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

Judging by the sources, the docker-java dependency in version 3.5.1 should already support api-version 1.44:

docker-java-core/src/main/java/com/github/dockerjava/core/RemoteApiVersion.java

The solution for you might be as easy, as setting api.versionin the docker-java.properties:
https://github.com/docker-java/docker-java/blob/main/docs/getting_started.md#properties-docker-javaproperties

[superslowsoftware (Matthew Nash)]

I believe the issue with their update is that they’re reporting “APIVersion” now instead of “ApiVersion”. Whole internet seems to be breaking from the change. Found the problem when our ansible installs stopped working.

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

When I query the version endpoint using curl and the local docker.sock, the keys are identical:

Output with docker 28.1.1:

me@docker:~$  curl --silent -XGET --unix-socket /run/docker.sock http://localhost/version | jq .
{
 ...
  "Components": [
    {
      "Version": "28.1.1",
      "Details": {
        "ApiVersion": "1.49",
        "MinAPIVersion": "1.24",
      }
    },
  "Version": "28.1.1",
  "ApiVersion": "1.49",
  "MinAPIVersion": "1.24",
  ...
}

Output of Docker Version 29.0.0:

me@docker~ #  curl --silent -XGET --unix-socket /run/docker.sock http://localhost/version | jq .
{
  ... 
  "Version": "29.0.0",
  "ApiVersion": "1.52",
  "MinAPIVersion": "1.44",
  "Components": [
    {
      "Version": "29.0.0",
      "Details": {
        "ApiVersion": "1.52",
        "MinAPIVersion": "1.44",
      }
}

Of course, you can try with a specific version of the api:

curl --silent -XGET --unix-socket /run/docker.sock http://localhost/v1.44/version | jq .

[superslowsoftware (Matthew Nash)]

Very curious. I wonder why our version keys are reporting differently?

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

I figured it out: instead of querying the api through the socket, they use the json output of the docker cli.

[pkernevez]

There is the same workaround in the new dedicated thread: [Bug]: Docker 29.0.0 could not find a valid Docker environment · Issue #11212 · testcontainers/testcontainers-java · GitHub

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

Here is a workaround to set the minimum api version on Docker Engine level:

Error response from daemon: client version 1.24 is too old

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

There is an even more elegant way to do this, by specifying in the deamon.json.

I was just made aware of this blog post that already covered the solution:

Docker Engine v29 Release | Docker

[jcabrerazuniga]

Is this affecting Kubernetes? I wonder this as docker images are commonly used in this case.

[marklee425]

How can I do with Homebrew in macos for docker version downgrading? I am using 29.0.0 but having error
Error response from daemon: client version 1.52 is too new. Maximum supported API version is 1.43

[natemsrt (Nathanael Maher)]

It is affecting Kubernetes too. I’m not sure about newer versions, but I’m stuck on k8s version 1.20.5 (for IT reasons) and I got an error (the kubelet service failed to start due to not meeting the minimum API version) after Docker updated to 29. The solution for me was to downgrade Docker until I could find a more permanent solution.
Ubuntu command to get available Docker versions:

sudo apt-cache madison docker-ce

Example commands to downgrade Docker:

sudo apt install docker-ce=5:28.5.2-1~ubuntu.22.04~jammy
sudo apt install docker-ce-cli=5:28.5.2-1~ubuntu.22.04~jammy

# optional (if you use rootless Docker):
sudo apt install docker-ce-rootless-extras=5:28.5.2-1~ubuntu.22.04~jammy

EDIT:
If you can, it’s probably better to use the solution @meyay posted above.

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

@jcabrerazuniga

Is this affecting Kubernetes? I wonder this as docker images are commonly used in this case.

OCI Images are not affected by this. The Docker Engine release v29 itself was impacted. More precisely the backend api, which doesn’t accept client that use an api version <v1.44. Neither the problem, nor the shared workarounds are related to Kubernetes.

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

@marklee425

Error response from daemon: client version 1.52 is too new. Maximum supported API version is 1.43

You can try to export this variable in your terminal:

export DOCKER_API_VERSION=1.43

It should tell the client to use this specific version. You might want to add this to your ~/.zshrc (or if another shell than zsh is used: whatever rc file it uses).