Error: unable to start container "xxx": unable to find user root: no matching entries in passwd file about distrobox

[89luca89]

Hi @kkarsten62 thanks for reporting
So you create the container on one machine
Use the commit and save commands
Go to another machine
Restore/import the image, do a distrobox-create using that image and the distrobox-enter will fail on the new machine is that right?

Can I have some logs of the various stepst you've taken? Also some Infos about podman or docker versions

[kkarsten62]

Hi Luca,
I can reproduce it very easily:

• I am on my Laptop with Fedora 33
• Using default podman version 3.3.1, (docker version 20.10.12, build e91ed57) is installed also, but podman is used by default
• Installation of Distrobox was done yesterday using your curl ... command
• Clean podman environment with podman container rm ... and podman image rm ...
• Create a new image/container by distrobox-create --name test --image ubuntu:20.04
• distrobox-enter --name test to enter into the container; not further command inside the container
• CTRL-D to step out
• Commit container with podman container commit -p test test_export
• podman image ls -a shows localhost/test_export:latest
• podman save localhost/test_export:latest | gzip > test_export.tar.gz to export to tar archive file
• ls -alh shows file with 51M 31. Dez 17:32 test_export.tar.gz
• Import back with podman import test_export.tar.gz
• podman image ls -a shows <none> <none> 9bf3629bf13d; so I can identify the image by the IMAGE ID
• Create Distrobox image/container by distrobox-create --image 9bf3629bf13d --name test_import
• distrobox-enter --name test_import ==> error message appears!
  During the process no error message appears - only on final distrobox-enter ...

When I import in a Fedora 35 Virtual Machine ==> same error message appears.

Please let my know if you need more information and let me know where I can reach out for log files ...
I will check now on my Ubuntu 18.04 desktop machine.

Karl ...

[kkarsten62]

Hi Luca,

I checked on my Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop Machine. But now with Docker Version 20.10.12, build e91ed57
The procedure from above brings the following error message on distrobox-enter --name test_import:

Error response from daemon: unable to find user root: no matching entries in passwd file Error: failed to start containers: test_import

BTW: $USER is in the docker group according to this advice: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/

Karl ...

[89luca89]

Cool thanks for the steps, I can reproduce that

The bad part is that on the imported image not even podman run -ti IMAGE_ID /bin/sh works, seems like it's an empty image

[89luca89]

Oh got it, you need to use podman load not podman import

You can see here in the podman documentation: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-import.1.html

To import the archive of image layers created by podman save, use podman load.

[89luca89]

I've fixed the wrong command in the documentation, tested the whole procedure using a couple of VMs and it works now, can you confirm?

[kkarsten62]

Hi Luca,

I did a quick check on my Ubuntu Desktop Machine with Docker and on my Fedora Laptop with Podman.
YES load is the trick :-)

As a regular user of Docker & Co I am more than impressed to see that all this funny stuff of OS, Gnome, Python, Qt, USB, ANT, MariaDB is working inside your Distrobox container - so many thanks for your great work. It helped me a lot to distribute my self-written Fitness-App from one machine to a next one ... So now I will celebrate Sylvester ...

For me you can close the Issue.

Karl ...

[89luca89]

Cool stuff glad is all fixed :-)