docker login fails on a server with no X11 installed

Question

I am trying to deploy a docker configuration with images on a private docker registry.

Now, every time I execute docker login registry.example.com, I get the following error message:

error getting credentials - err: exit status 1, out: Cannot autolaunch D-Bus without X11 $DISPLAY

The only solution I found for non-MacOS users was to run export $(dbus-launch) first, but that did not change anything.

I am running Ubuntu Server and tried with both the Ubuntu Docker package and the Docker-CE package.

How can I log in without an X11 session?

Answer 1

Looks like this is because it defaults to use the secretservice executable which seems to have some sort of X11 dependency for some reason. If you install and configure pass docker will use that instead which seems to solve the problem.

In a nutshell (from https://github.com/docker/compose/issues/6023)

sudo apt install gnupg2 pass  gpg2 --full-generate-key 

This generates a you a gpg2 key. After that's done you can list it with

gpg2 -k 

Copy the key id (from the line labelled [uid]) and do

pass init "whatever key id you have" 

Now docker login should work.

There are a couple of bugs logged on launchpad regarding this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/golang-github-docker-docker-credential-helpers/+bug/1794307

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/docker-compose/+bug/1796119