Docker can't load config file, but container works fine

Archive Machine
1

I’m using docker-machine with generic driver to deploy containers on an existing remote host. But when I switch to the remote host and try to run a container, this happens:

$ docker-machine create --driver generic --generic-ip-address=$REMOTEIP \
--generic-ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_rsa --generic-ssh-user $REMOTEUSER vm
[works fine]

$ eval $(docker-machine env vm) #switch to remote host
[works fine]

$ docker run -it busybox sh
WARNING: Error loading config file:/home/user/.docker/config.json - open /home/user/.docker/config.json: permission denied
[Even with the warning, runs fine]

The container runs fine anyway, but I want to solve that warning message.

Given that user doesn’t exist in the remote host, I guess that this file doesn’t exist. But …

  1. why does the engine search for it in the first place? shouldn’t it search for the config.json of $REMOTEUSER instead of that?

  2. and why the container runs properly on the remote host anyway?

2

Turns out docker is not searching for that file in the remote host but in the local host. Turns out that file exists and it’s owned by root.

$ ls -lsa ~/.docker/config.json 4 -rw------- 1 root root
95 dic 29 15:29 /home/user/.docker/config.json

That’s why it says permission denied.

A simple chown fixes the issue:

$ sudo chown user:user /home/user/.docker -R