Unable to connect to docker engine on lima when restarting Mac and lima

[akihiro2526]

Unable to connect to docker engine on lima when restarting Mac and lima

details of the error.

error during connect: Get "http://%2FUsers%2Fam%2F.lima%2Fdocker%2Fsock%2Fdocker.sock/v1.24/images/json": EOF

Version

• lima 0.9.1
• docker 20.10.13
• Docker Compose 2.2.3
• MacOS Monterey 12.3

How the error occurs

1. Start lima using Docker.yml
2. Launching containers with Docker compose
3. Restart Mac with container and lima running
4. Restart the Mac and start lima with the command limactl start docker
5. When type the docker command, get an error code.
   error during connect: Get "http://%2FUsers%2Fam%2F.lima%2Fdocker%2Fsock%2Fdocker.sock/v1.24/images/json": EOF

Status of the Docker engine on lima at the time of the error

$ service docker status
○ docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: ● docker.socket
       Docs: https://docs.docker.com

Restart Docker engine on lima

$ sudo service docker restart
$ service docker status
● docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2022-03-27 02:48:57 UTC; 2s ago
TriggeredBy: ● docker.socket
       Docs: https://docs.docker.com
   Main PID: 2328 (dockerd)
      Tasks: 8
     Memory: 26.5M
        CPU: 188ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/docker.service
             └─2328 /usr/bin/dockerd -H fd:// --containerd=/run/containerd/containerd.sock

After restarting the Docker engine on lima, I get the same error and cannot connect to the Docker engine.

How can I make sure that the connection to the Docker engine does not get disconnected when I restart my Mac?

[afbjorklund]

Normally lima starts the user docker (not the system docker), so you would have to use systemctl --user docker status.

anders@lima-docker:/home/anders/lima$ systemctl --system status docker
○ docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
TriggeredBy: ● docker.socket
       Docs: https://docs.docker.com
anders@lima-docker:/home/anders/lima$ systemctl --user status docker
● docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine (Rootless)
     Loaded: loaded (/home/anders.linux/.config/systemd/user/docker.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2022-03-27 08:26:01 UTC; 25min ago
       Docs: https://docs.docker.com/go/rootless/
   Main PID: 1410 (rootlesskit)
...

---

And it is $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/docker.sock that is forwarded:

portForwards:
- guestSocket: "/run/user/{{.UID}}/docker.sock"
  hostSocket: "{{.Dir}}/sock/docker.sock"

See https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/rootless/ for details.

It is supposed to be "enabled" (start at boot) by default, though?

[afbjorklund]

Separating between the user containers (a.k.a. rootless, fakeroot) and the system containers would be a good entry for the lima manual.

It is something that is often confusing to new users, especially when Docker didn't use sudo but instead added the docker root group...

[akihiro2526]

Thank you for your response.