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Docker 27 errors

Docker & Container Errors

Daemon connectivity, disk space, image pulls, ports and architecture mismatches.

Understanding Docker errors

Docker errors are usually about the daemon (not running, or not reachable by your user), the host (disk full, port already bound), or the image (wrong architecture, rate-limited pull, missing credentials). Apple Silicon and ARM cloud instances made architecture mismatches far more common. exec format error is the signature, and it means an amd64 binary is being run on arm64 or vice versa.

How to debug Docker errors

  1. Check the daemon before anything else: docker info. A "cannot connect to the Docker daemon" error is a socket permission or service problem, never an image problem.
  2. Reclaim space deliberately with docker system df to see where it went, then docker system prune. Build cache and dangling volumes are usually the bulk of it.
  3. For exec format error, run docker image inspect --format '{{.Architecture}}' image:tag and compare with uname -m. Build multi-arch images with docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64,linux/arm64.
  4. Find what is holding a port with ss -tulpn | grep :PORT (or lsof -i :PORT) rather than restarting Docker and hoping.
  5. Read build failures from the first error, not the last. BuildKit prints failing steps out of order, and the final line is often a downstream consequence.

Tools worth reaching for

  • docker info
  • docker system df
  • docker buildx
  • ss -tulpn
  • docker logs --tail 100

All 27 Docker errors

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