Linux – docker.sock permission denied

dockerlinux

When I try to run simple docker commands like:

$ docker ps -a

I get an error message:

Got permission denied … /var/run/docker.sock: connect: permission denied

When I check permissions with

$ ls -al /var/run/

I see this line:

srw-rw---- root docker docker.sock

So, I follow an advice from many forums and add local user to docker group:

$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

But it does not help. I still get the very same error message. How can I fix it?

Best Answer

For those new to the shell, the command:

$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

needs to have $USER defined in your shell. This is often there by default, but you may need to set the value to your login id in some shells.

Changing the groups of a user does not change existing logins, terminals, and shells that a user has open. To avoid performing a login again, you can simply run:

$ newgrp docker

to get access to that group in your current shell.

Once you have done this, the user effectively has root access on the server, so only do this for users that are trusted with unrestricted sudo access.

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