linux - docker.sock permission denied

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

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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.

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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.