TestContainer stopped working after updating Docker Desktop to v4.56.0

[hifacundoramallo (framallo)]

Currently I’m using org.testcontainers:testcontainers:1.20.6 and after updating Docker Desktop to v4.56.0, now my tests stopped working.

[Test worker] INFO  o.testcontainers.images.PullPolicy - Image pull policy will be performed by: DefaultPullPolicy()
[Test worker] INFO  o.t.utility.ImageNameSubstitutor - Image name substitution will be performed by: DefaultImageNameSubstitutor (composite of 'ConfigurationFileImageNameSubstitutor' and 'PrefixingImageNameSubstitutor')
[Test worker] INFO  o.testcontainers.DockerClientFactory - Testcontainers version: 1.20.6
[Test worker] INFO  o.t.d.DockerMachineClientProviderStrategy - docker-machine executable was not found on PATH ([C:\Python313\Scripts\, C:\Python313\, C:\Program Files\Eclipse Adoptium\jdk-17.0.14.7-hotspot\bin, C:\WINDOWS\system32, C:\WINDOWS, C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem, C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\, C:\WINDOWS\System32\OpenSSH\, C:\Program Files\Git\cmd, C:\Program Files\nodejs\, C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin, C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker\resources\bin, C:\Users\Usuario\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps, C:\Users\Usuario\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\bin, C:\Users\Usuario\AppData\Roaming\npm, C:\Users\Usuario\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\cmdline-tools\latest\bin, C:\Users\Usuario\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\platform-tools])
15:03:46.471 [Test worker] ERROR o.t.d.DockerClientProviderStrategy - Could not find a valid Docker environment. Please check configuration. Attempted configurations were:
	EnvironmentAndSystemPropertyClientProviderStrategy: failed with exception BadRequestException (Status 400: {"ID":"","Containers":0,"ContainersRunning":0,"ContainersPaused":0,"ContainersStopped":0,"Images":0,"Driver":"","DriverStatus":null,"Plugins":{"Volume":null,"Network":null,"Authorization":null,"Log":null},"MemoryLimit":false,"SwapLimit":false,"CpuCfsPeriod":false,"CpuCfsQuota":false,"CPUShares":false,"CPUSet":false,"PidsLimit":false,"IPv4Forwarding":false,"Debug":false,"NFd":0,"OomKillDisable":false,"NGoroutines":0,"SystemTime":"","LoggingDriver":"","CgroupDriver":"","NEventsListener":0,"KernelVersion":"","OperatingSystem":"","OSVersion":"","OSType":"","Architecture":"","IndexServerAddress":"","RegistryConfig":null,"NCPU":0,"MemTotal":0,"GenericResources":null,"DockerRootDir":"","HttpProxy":"","HttpsProxy":"","NoProxy":"","Name":"","Labels":["com.docker.desktop.address=npipe://\\\\.\\pipe\\docker_cli"],"ExperimentalBuild":false,"ServerVersion":"","Runtimes":null,"DefaultRuntime":"","Swarm":{"NodeID":"","NodeAddr":"","LocalNodeState":"","ControlAvailable":false,"Error":"","RemoteManagers":null},"LiveRestoreEnabled":false,"Isolation":"","InitBinary":"","ContainerdCommit":{"ID":""},"RuncCommit":{"ID":""},"InitCommit":{"ID":""},"SecurityOptions":null,"CDISpecDirs":null,"Warnings":null})
	NpipeSocketClientProviderStrategy: failed with exception BadRequestException (Status 400: {"ID":"","Containers":0,"ContainersRunning":0,"ContainersPaused":0,"ContainersStopped":0,"Images":0,"Driver":"","DriverStatus":null,"Plugins":{"Volume":null,"Network":null,"Authorization":null,"Log":null},"MemoryLimit":false,"SwapLimit":false,"CpuCfsPeriod":false,"CpuCfsQuota":false,"CPUShares":false,"CPUSet":false,"PidsLimit":false,"IPv4Forwarding":false,"Debug":false,"NFd":0,"OomKillDisable":false,"NGoroutines":0,"SystemTime":"","LoggingDriver":"","CgroupDriver":"","NEventsListener":0,"KernelVersion":"","OperatingSystem":"","OSVersion":"","OSType":"","Architecture":"","IndexServerAddress":"","RegistryConfig":null,"NCPU":0,"MemTotal":0,"GenericResources":null,"DockerRootDir":"","HttpProxy":"","HttpsProxy":"","NoProxy":"","Name":"","Labels":["com.docker.desktop.address=npipe://\\\\.\\pipe\\docker_cli"],"ExperimentalBuild":false,"ServerVersion":"","Runtimes":null,"DefaultRuntime":"","Swarm":{"NodeID":"","NodeAddr":"","LocalNodeState":"","ControlAvailable":false,"Error":"","RemoteManagers":null},"LiveRestoreEnabled":false,"Isolation":"","InitBinary":"","ContainerdCommit":{"ID":""},"RuncCommit":{"ID":""},"InitCommit":{"ID":""},"SecurityOptions":null,"CDISpecDirs":null,"Warnings":null})As no valid configuration was found, execution cannot continue.
See https://java.testcontainers.org/on_failure.html for more details.

java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
	at java.base/jdk.internal.misc.Unsafe.ensureClassInitialized0(Native Method)
	at java.base/jdk.internal.misc.Unsafe.ensureClassInitialized(Unsafe.java:1160)
	at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.acquireConstructorAccessor(Constructor.java:549)
	at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstanceWithCaller(Constructor.java:499)
	at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:486)
	at java.base/java.util.Optional.orElseGet(Optional.java:364)
	at java.base/java.util.ArrayList.forEach(ArrayList.java:1596)
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Could not find a valid Docker environment. Please see logs and check configuration
	at org.testcontainers.dockerclient.DockerClientProviderStrategy.lambda$getFirstValidStrategy$7(DockerClientProviderStrategy.java:274)
	at java.base/java.util.Optional.orElseThrow(Optional.java:403)
	at org.testcontainers.dockerclient.DockerClientProviderStrategy.getFirstValidStrategy(DockerClientProviderStrategy.java:265)
	at org.testcontainers.DockerClientFactory.getOrInitializeStrategy(DockerClientFactory.java:154)
	at org.testcontainers.DockerClientFactory.client(DockerClientFactory.java:196)
	at org.testcontainers.DockerClientFactory$1.getDockerClient(DockerClientFactory.java:108)
	at com.github.dockerjava.api.DockerClientDelegate.authConfig(DockerClientDelegate.java:109)
	at org.testcontainers.containers.GenericContainer.start(GenericContainer.java:321)
	at com.orbital.be.integration.BaseLineIntegrationTest.<clinit>(BaseLineIntegrationTest.java:63)
	... 7 more


Could not find a valid Docker environment. Please see logs and check configuration
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Could not find a valid Docker environment. Please see logs and check configuration
	at org.testcontainers.dockerclient.DockerClientProviderStrategy.lambda$getFirstValidStrategy$7(DockerClientProviderStrategy.java:274)
	at java.base/java.util.Optional.orElseThrow(Optional.java:403)
	at org.testcontainers.dockerclient.DockerClientProviderStrategy.getFirstValidStrategy(DockerClientProviderStrategy.java:265)
	at org.testcontainers.DockerClientFactory.getOrInitializeStrategy(DockerClientFactory.java:154)
	at org.testcontainers.DockerClientFactory.client(DockerClientFactory.java:196)
	at org.testcontainers.DockerClientFactory$1.getDockerClient(DockerClientFactory.java:108)
	at com.github.dockerjava.api.DockerClientDelegate.authConfig(DockerClientDelegate.java:109)
	at org.testcontainers.containers.GenericContainer.start(GenericContainer.java:321)
	at com.orbital.be.integration.BaseLineIntegrationTest.<clinit>(BaseLineIntegrationTest.java:63)
	at java.base/jdk.internal.misc.Unsafe.ensureClassInitialized0(Native Method)
	at java.base/jdk.internal.misc.Unsafe.ensureClassInitialized(Unsafe.java:1160)
	at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.acquireConstructorAccessor(Constructor.java:549)
	at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstanceWithCaller(Constructor.java:499)
	at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:486)
	at java.base/java.util.Optional.orElseGet(Optional.java:364)
	at java.base/java.util.ArrayList.forEach(ArrayList.java:1596)

According to chatgpt and gemini, the issue is related to the pipes used by the new version to connect with testcontainers.

I’ve tried several approaches, but nothing seems to work.

• Setting the option Expose daemon on tcp://localhost:2375 without TLS
• Adding the environment variable DOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:2375.
• Adding the environment variable DOCKER_HOST to “unix:///var/run/docker.sock”, “npipe:////./pipe/docker_engine”, but none of this options worked.
• static { System.setProperty(“testcontainers.docker.client.strategy”, “org.testcontainers.dockerclient.NpipeSocketClientProviderStrategy”);} before my containers start.

The only option that did the trick was using

testImplementation(“org.testcontainers:testcontainers:2.0.2”)

in my build.gradle but this library is not compatible with the versions for postgress and rabbit I’m using, so is producing a shaded library issue.

can you help me to find a workaround?

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

Testcontainers 1.20.6 was released in May 2025. It does not work out of the box with Docker Engine v29, which is used by Docker Desktop since version 4.52.0.

I would put my money on: the testcontainers version used, by default uses an api version that is smaller than the min-api version 1.44 docker v29 requires by default.

You can set the api version in the docker-java.properties of your project:

Docker 29 increased minimum API version, breaks Traefik reverse proxy

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

Or you can modify the daemon.json to unlock an older api version:

Portainer problem in windows docker 4.52.0

So apparently seeing this was not enough: [image] I should have clicked the endpoint. The problem is not the docker.sock. The problem is that portainer does not support the min API version v1.44 docker v29 requires. If you configure the min API version to 1.24, portainer will work again: open Docker Desktop settings → Docker Engine add property min-api-version": "1.24" click “Apply & restart” to restart the Docker Engine Now Portainer will work again. The resulting daemon configuration …

[meyay (Metin Y.)]

@hifacundoramallo

testImplementation(“org.testcontainers:testcontainers:2.0.2”)

It should also work with 1.21.4.

[hifacundoramallo (framallo)]

@meyay

Testcontainers 1.20.6 was released in May 2025. It does not work out of the box with Docker Engine v29, which is used by Docker Desktop since version 4.52.0.

I would put my money on: the testcontainers version used, by default uses an api version that is smaller than the min-api version 1.44 docker v29 requires by default.

You can set the api version in the docker-java.properties of your project:

Thanks @meyay !!!

I coulnd’t use “testImplementation(“org.testcontainers:testcontainers:2.0.2”)” because it’s not compatible with the version of postgress and rabbit I’m using.

So the solution was create the file docker-java.properties under my src/test/resources and set the version there.

Now it works just fine!

Thanks a lot!