docker-machine create with digitalocean driver: ss

Question

I´m using docker tools on windows.

create command was working perfectly last week and I managed to create a number of machines on Digital Ocean. Then I tried today with no success. I repeated the same command with different regions and I always get the same result:

λ docker-machine create -d digitalocean --digitalocean-access-token=MYTOKEN --digitalocean-region=ams2 vmname
Running pre-create checks...
Creating machine...
(fernu) Creating SSH key...
(fernu) Creating Digital Ocean droplet...
(fernu) Waiting for IP address to be assigned to the Droplet...
Waiting for machine to be running, this may take a few minutes...
Detecting operating system of created instance...
Waiting for SSH to be available...
Detecting the provisioner...
Provisioning with ubuntu(systemd)...
Installing Docker...
Copying certs to the local machine directory...
Copying certs to the remote machine...
Setting Docker configuration on the remote daemon...
Error creating machine: Error running provisioning: ssh command error:
command : sudo systemctl -f start docker
err     : exit status 1
output  : Job for docker.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status docker.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

If I execute the suggested command:

root@fernu:~# systemctl status docker.service
● docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d
           └─10-machine.conf
   Active: inactive (dead) (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2017-06-30 20:56:13 UTC; 8min ago
     Docs: https://docs.docker.com
  Process: 4943 ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker daemon -H tcp://0.0.0.0:2376 -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock --storage-driver aufs --tlsverify --tlscacert /etc/docker/ca.pem --tlscert /etc/docker/server.pem --tlskey /etc/docker/server-key.pem --label provider=digitalocean (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
 Main PID: 4943 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Jun 30 20:56:13 fernu systemd[1]: docker.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 30 20:56:13 fernu systemd[1]: Failed to start Docker Application Container Engine.
Jun 30 20:56:13 fernu systemd[1]: docker.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jun 30 20:56:13 fernu systemd[1]: docker.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 30 20:56:13 fernu systemd[1]: docker.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Jun 30 20:56:13 fernu systemd[1]: Stopped Docker Application Container Engine.
Jun 30 20:56:13 fernu systemd[1]: docker.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jun 30 20:56:13 fernu systemd[1]: Failed to start Docker Application Container Engine.

Any help would be appreciated

Update

It´s working with ubuntu 14: --digitalocean-image=ubuntu-14-04-x64 so it seams like a problem with the default image (ubuntu-16-04-x64)

Answer 1

This seems to be hitting a lot of people. TL;DR: There is a bug in docker-machine v0.12.0 and this issue can be resolved by upgrading.

Logging in to the DigitalOcean instance and running journalctl -xe provides more information:

-- Unit docker.service has begun starting up.
Jul 07 20:03:52 docker-sandbox docker[4930]: `docker daemon` is not supported on Linux. Please run `do
Jul 07 20:03:52 docker-sandbox systemd[1]: docker.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/
Jul 07 20:03:52 docker-sandbox systemd[1]: Failed to start Docker Application Container Engine.
-- Subject: Unit docker.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel

The key here is docker daemon is not supported on Linux. A bug in docker-machine's version comparison code caused an incorrect systemd unit file to be produced (located at /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d/10-machine.conf) on certain versions of Ubuntu.

A fix has been committed and a new release (v0.12.1) was made.

You can grab the latest release at: https://github.com/docker/machine/releases/tag/v0.12.1