vm.max_map_count problem for docker at windows

Question

I am trying to run ELK docker images on my windows10 as below.

  C:\WINDOWS\system32> docker run  -p 5601:5601 -p 9200:9200 -p 9300:9300 -p 5044:5044  -p 9600:9600 -p 9700:9700 -it --memory="3g" --name elk sebp/elk

I got below error, could i set vm.max_map_count at docker run command line?

[1]: max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count [65530] is too low, increase to at least [262144]

Any suggestion or hints are more than welcome!

Answer 1

This can be done via WSL's support of a .wslconfig file (stored in your Windows %userprofile% folder), which can apply and persist such setting across restarts, for example:

[wsl2]
kernelCommandLine = sysctl.vm.max_map_count=262144

(Note that's NOT a space after sysctl, but a period, which is necessary for it to work, from my testing.)

After saving the file, restart wsl with wsl --shutdown. Before reopening your WSL, make sure the vm is shutdown, using wsl -l -v, as it can take several seconds sometimes.

For more on this file, its many available settings, and even that need to wait for the shutdown, see the docs.

Answer 2

I've had similar experience with running elastic/elastic, so this might help.

When you're running it in WSL2, you might want to log in to your WSL VM: wsl -d docker-desktop (Where docker-desktop is the name of the vm, you can check for them with wsl --list

Once in your docker-desktop, do the following:

echo "vm.max_map_count = 262144"> /etc/sysctl.d/999-docker-desktop-conf

followed by: sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144

You can then exit the docker-host by typing exit.