I have a docker container that maps sound devices (speaker and microphone) from the host to the container. Periodically, the container loses these devices and running aplay -l and arecord -l in the container shows the devices are missing, while both devices show up on the host. The host is unfortunately running Ubuntu 16 while the container is running Ubuntu 24. The host environment is pretty tight on memory (2GB), but I am not sure it is a memory issue. Any insight would be appreciated. Below is the docker run command used to start the container:
docker run -it \
--name laserassistant-latest \
--privileged \
--cpuset-cpus="0-3" \
--memory="8g" \
--shm-size=4g \
--ipc=host \
--device /dev/snd:/dev/snd \
--device /dev/dri \
--group-add audio \
--group-add video \
-e DISPLAY=:0 \
-e MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=2.1 \
-e MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=120 \
-e GALLIUM_DRIVER=llvmpipe \
-e LP_NUM_THREADS=4 \
-e MESA_NO_ERROR=1 \
-e OMP_NUM_THREADS=4 \
-e TESSERACT_NUM_THREADS=4 \
--tmpfs /tmp:rw,noexec,nosuid,size=2g \
-v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
-v /home/lasersystem/lasersystem/LM_2DVision/recipes:/home/lasersystem/lasersystem/LM_2DVision/recipes:ro \
--entrypoint /bin/bash \
laserassistant:latest
Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
rimelek
November 13, 2025, 8:45pm
2
Then you must have a pretty old version of Docker or maybe one installed as a Snap package.
Please share the output of the following commands:
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I neved worked with sound devices from Docker containers, but I would start with checking system logs and docker daemon logs. For system logs, I would try journalctl command and/or syslog under /var/log and also the dmesg.command.
but I don’t really know why you would lose a device and even if it happens because of a Docker bug, i you have an old version, that will not be fixed
Docker Version
Docker version 20.10.7, build f0df350
Docker Info
Client:
Context: default
Debug Mode: false
Plugins:
app: Docker App (Docker Inc., v0.9.1-beta3)
buildx: Build with BuildKit (Docker Inc., v0.5.1-docker)
scan: Docker Scan (Docker Inc., v0.8.0)
Server:
Containers: 1
Running: 1
Paused: 0
Stopped: 0
Images: 1
Server Version: 20.10.7
Storage Driver: aufs
Root Dir: /var/lib/docker/aufs
Backing Filesystem: extfs
Dirs: 41
Dirperm1 Supported: true
Logging Driver: json-file
Cgroup Driver: cgroupfs
Cgroup Version: 1
Plugins:
Volume: local
Network: bridge host ipvlan macvlan null overlay
Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file local logentries splunk syslog
Swarm: inactive
Runtimes: io.containerd.runc.v2 io.containerd.runtime.v1.linux runc
Default Runtime: runc
Init Binary: docker-init
containerd version: d71fcd7d8303cbf684402823e425e9dd2e99285d
runc version: b9ee9c6314599f1b4a7f497e1f1f856fe433d3b7
init version: de40ad0
Security Options:
apparmor
seccomp
Profile: default
Kernel Version: 4.13.0-36-generic
Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
OSType: linux
Architecture: x86_64
CPUs: 4
Total Memory: 7.682GiB
Name: lasersystem-desktop
ID: KZ27:X2NS:5646:ZFJJ:W5MO:2ZV3:BGHF:P7RC:NZ23:QTV5:BOMA:PC4Y
Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker
Debug Mode: false
Registry: https://index.docker.io/v1/
Labels:
Experimental: false
Insecure Registries:
127.0.0.0/8
Live Restore Enabled: false
WARNING: No swap limit support
WARNING: the aufs storage-driver is deprecated, and will be removed in a future release.
bluepuma77
November 14, 2025, 11:59am
4
Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS was released 2018-03-01 and had 5 years of support, it’s end-of-life (unless you pay).
Docker 20.10.7 is from 2021-06-02 and there are probably hundreds of fixes and improvements since then.
So instead of trying to debug outdated software, I recommend to upgrade first.