Rootless Docker Install: Failed to start docker.service

Archive Feature Requests
1

Hi, I’m trying to install Rootless Docker on a shared cluster (to work with Slurm). However, I repeatedly ran into Failed to start docker.service issue. This persists after a fresh installation of Docker (after uninstalling Docker). Any help would be very valuable!

$ dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh install
[WARNING] File already exists, skipping: /afs/.../.config/systemd/user/docker.service
[INFO] starting systemd service docker.service
+ systemctl --user start docker.service
Failed to start docker.service: Unit docker.service not found.
+ set +x
[ERROR] Failed to start docker.service. Run `journalctl -n 20 --no-pager --user --unit docker.service` to show the error log.
[ERROR] Before retrying installation, you might need to uninstall the current setup: `/usr/bin/dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh uninstall -f ; /usr/bin/rootlesskit rm -rf /afs/.../.local/share/docker`
No journal files were opened due to insufficient permissions.
2

Hi

It seems like the uninstall you made didnt uninstall the service, you can try and delete the file it says its skipping in line 2 and retry the script

3

Thanks! Unfortunately, this didn’t solve the problem:

[INFO] Creating /afs/home/.config/systemd/user/docker.service
[INFO] starting systemd service docker.service
+ systemctl --user start docker.service
Failed to start docker.service: Unit docker.service not found.
+ set +x
[ERROR] Failed to start docker.service. Run `journalctl -n 20 --no-pager --user --unit docker.service` to show the error log.
[ERROR] Before retrying installation, you might need to uninstall the current setup: `/usr/bin/dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh uninstall -f ; /usr/bin/rootlesskit rm -rf /afs/home/.local/share/docker`
No journal files were opened due to insufficient permissions.
4

Did you run the above commands?

5

Yes, but the problem persisted after this as well :confused:

6

Just want to follow up on the thread. In the end, it seems like placing docker.service in /etc/systemd/user (via sudo) instead of ~/.config/systemd/user/docker.service would work.

However, re-running the dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh again ran into another problem:

[INFO] Creating [path removed for brevity]
[INFO] starting systemd service docker.service
+ systemctl --user start docker.service
Job for docker.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl --user status docker.service" and "journalctl --user -xe" for details.
+ set +x
[ERROR] Failed to start docker.service. Run `journalctl -n 20 --no-pager --user --unit docker.service` to show the error log.
[ERROR] Before retrying installation, you might need to uninstall the current setup: `/usr/bin/dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh uninstall -f ; /usr/bin/rootlesskit rm -rf /afs/csail.mit.edu/u/h/hanguo/.local/share/docker`
No journal files were opened due to insufficient permissions.

Following the suggestion, I ran the journalctl command,

$ journalctl -n 20 --no-pager --user --unit docker.service
Hint: You are currently not seeing messages from the system.
      Users in groups 'adm', 'systemd-journal' can see all messages.
      Pass -q to turn off this notice.
No journal files were opened due to insufficient permissions.

Adding sudo,

$ sudo journalctl -n 20 --no-pager --user --unit docker.service
No journal files were found.

If this is helpful, here’s the status output

$ systemctl --user --no-pager --full status docker.service
● docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine (Rootless)
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/xdg/systemd/user/docker.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2024-04-04 17:43:09 EDT; 7min ago
       Docs: https://docs.docker.com/go/rootless/
    Process: 1705080 ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd-rootless.sh (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Main PID: 1705080 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
        CPU: 379ms

Do you have any insights regarding how I should proceed from that? Thanks again for the help!

7

No, but if the installer creates files under your home, I wouldn’t create the file somewhere else. I never had problem with the installer, so I don’t know what could go wrong.

8

Got it, thanks anyway!

9

Hey my attempt running the rootless install script failed with the same messages. In the end it turned out my version of slirp4netns was too old.
I got the newest one (v1.3.0) from here, moved the old one from /usr/bin/slirp4netns to /usr/bin/slirp4netns.old and placed the new one there.
After that the install script worked!