standard_init_linux.go:178: exec user process caused "exec format error"

Question

docker started throwing this error:

standard_init_linux.go:178: exec user process caused "exec format error"

whenever I run a specific docker container with CMD or ENTRYPOINT, with no regard to any changes to the file other then removing CMD or ENTRYPOINT. here is the docker file I have been working with which worked perfectly until about an hour ago:

FROM buildpack-deps:jessie

ENV PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH

ENV LANG C.UTF-8

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
        tcl \
        tk \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

ENV GPG_KEY 0D96DF4D4110E5C43FBFB17F2D347EA6AA65421D
ENV PYTHON_VERSION 3.6.0

ENV PYTHON_PIP_VERSION 9.0.1

RUN set -ex \
    && buildDeps=' \
        tcl-dev \
        tk-dev \
    ' \
    && apt-get update && apt-get install -y $buildDeps --no-install-recommends && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
    \
    && wget -O python.tar.xz "https://www.python.org/ftp/python/${PYTHON_VERSION%%[a-z]*}/Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tar.xz" \
    && wget -O python.tar.xz.asc "https://www.python.org/ftp/python/${PYTHON_VERSION%%[a-z]*}/Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tar.xz.asc" \
    && export GNUPGHOME="$(mktemp -d)" \
    && gpg --keyserver ha.pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys "$GPG_KEY" \
    && gpg --batch --verify python.tar.xz.asc python.tar.xz \
    && rm -r "$GNUPGHOME" python.tar.xz.asc \
    && mkdir -p /usr/src/python \
    && tar -xJC /usr/src/python --strip-components=1 -f python.tar.xz \
    && rm python.tar.xz \
    \
    && cd /usr/src/python \
    && ./configure \
        --enable-loadable-sqlite-extensions \
        --enable-shared \
    && make -j$(nproc) \
    && make install \
    && ldconfig \
    \
    && if [ ! -e /usr/local/bin/pip3 ]; then : \
        && wget -O /tmp/get-pip.py 'https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py' \
        && python3 /tmp/get-pip.py "pip==$PYTHON_PIP_VERSION" \
        && rm /tmp/get-pip.py \
    ; fi \
    && pip3 install --no-cache-dir --upgrade --force-reinstall "pip==$PYTHON_PIP_VERSION" \
    && [ "$(pip list |tac|tac| awk -F '[ ()]+' '$1 == "pip" { print $2; exit }')" = "$PYTHON_PIP_VERSION" ] \
    \
    && find /usr/local -depth \
        \( \
            \( -type d -a -name test -o -name tests \) \
            -o \
            \( -type f -a -name '*.pyc' -o -name '*.pyo' \) \
        \) -exec rm -rf '{}' + \
    && apt-get purge -y --auto-remove $buildDeps \
    && rm -rf /usr/src/python ~/.cache

RUN cd /usr/local/bin \
    && { [ -e easy_install ] || ln -s easy_install-* easy_install; } \
    && ln -s idle3 idle \
    && ln -s pydoc3 pydoc \
    && ln -s python3 python \
    && ln -s python3-config python-config

RUN pip install uwsgi

RUN mkdir /config

RUN mkdir /logs

ENV HOME /var/www

WORKDIR /config

ADD conf/requirements.txt /config

RUN pip install -r /config/requirements.txt

ADD conf/wsgi.py /config

ADD conf/wsgi.ini /config

ADD conf/__init__.py /config

ADD start.sh /bin/start.sh

RUN chmod +x /bin/start.sh

EXPOSE 8000

ENTRYPOINT ["start.sh", "uwsgi", "--ini", "wsgi.ini"]

Answer 1

I forgot to put

#!/bin/bash

at the top of the sh file, problem solved.

Answer 2

This can happen if you're trying to run an x86 built image on an arm64/aarch64 machine.

You'll need to rebuild the image using the corresponding architecture

Answer 3

This error could also occur if an image was built on a MacBook Pro with a Apple M1 Pro chip, which is ARM-based, so by default the Docker build command targets arm64.

Docker in fact detects the Apple M1 Pro platform as linux/arm64/v8

Specifying the platform to both the build command and version tag was enough:

# Build for ARM64 (default)
docker build -t <image-name>:<version>-arm64 .

# Build for ARM64 
docker build --platform=linux/arm64 -t <image-name>:<version>-arm64 .

# Build for AMD64
docker build --platform=linux/amd64 -t <image-name>:<version>-amd64 .

Environment

Chip: Apple M1 Pro, 10 Cores (8 performance and 2 efficiency)
Docker version 20.10.12, build e91ed57

Answer 4

Add this code

#!/usr/bin/env bash

at the top of your script file.