Cannot connect to the Docker daemon on macOS

Question

I normally prefer to manage my apps on my OSX with brew

I am able to install docker, docker-compose and docker-machine

docker --version
Docker version 17.05.0-ce, build 89658be
docker-compose --version
docker-compose version 1.13.0, build unknown
docker-machine --version
docker-machine version 0.11.0, build 5b27455

I did not download and run 'Docker for Mac' app.

However when I try to run

> docker run -d -p 80:80 --name webserver nginx
docker: Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?.
See 'docker run --help'.

I have already checked the sock file

ls -lah /var/run/docker.sock /var/tmp/docker.sock
ls: /var/run/docker.sock: No such file or directory
ls: /var/tmp/docker.sock: No such file or directory

I have also tried this proposed solution: Mac OS X sudo docker Cannot connect to the Docker daemon. Is the docker daemon running on this host?

But I got this error message:

$ eval $(docker-machine env default)
Host does not exist: "default"

Is it possible to get a docker service to run by command line tools?

Answer 1

I had the same problem. Docker running but couldn't access it through CLI.

For me the problem was solved by executing "Docker Quickstart Terminal.app". This is located in the "/Applications/Docker/" folder. As long as I work in this instance of the Terminal app Docker works perfectly. If a second window is needed I have to run the "Quickstart" app once more.

I have a Docker for Mac installation. Therefore I am not sure if my solution is valid for a Homebrew installation.

The "Docker Quickstart Terminal" app seems to be essentially some applescripts to launch the terminal app and a bash start script that initialise all the necessary environment variables.

Hope this helps someone else !

Answer 2

i simply had to run spotlight search and execute the Docker application under /Applications folder which brew cask install created. Once this was run it asked to complete installation. I was then able to run docker ps

Answer 3

brew cask install docker

Then launch the Docker app. Click next. It will ask for privileged access. Confirm. A whale icon should appear in the top bar. Click it and wait for "Docker is running" to appear.

You should be able to run docker commands now.

docker ps

Answer 4

Try this to create default.

docker-machine create default

Answer 5

I first tried docker and docker-compose via homebrew, but it had the problem listed here. I had to install docker's official install from https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/install/ and then everything worked as expected.

Answer 6

On macOS the docker binary is only a client and you cannot use it to run the docker daemon, because Docker daemon uses Linux-specific kernel features, therefore you can’t run Docker natively in OS X. So you have to install docker-machine in order to create VM and attach to it.

Install docker-machine on macOS

If you don't have docker-machine command yet, install it by using one of the following methods:

• Using Brew command: brew install docker-machine docker.

• manually:

  install -v <(curl https://github.com/docker/machine/releases/download/v0.5.3/docker-machine_linux-amd64) /usr/local/bin/docker-machine
  

See: Get started with Docker for Mac.

Configure docker-machine on macOS

Create a default machine (if you don't have one, see: docker-machine ls):

docker-machine create --driver virtualbox default

Then set-up the environment for the Docker client:

eval "$(docker-machine env default)"

Then double-check by listing containers:

docker ps

See: Get started with Docker Machine and a local VM.

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Related:

• Brew install docker does not include docker engine?
• For Linux, see: Docker can't connect to docker daemon
• For Windows, see: Docker warning: failed to get default registry endpoint from daemon