“docker-containerd-shim”: executable file not found in $PATH: unknown

Question

Docker is not able to start containers anymore because docker-containerd-shim executable was no found in $PATH.

The thing is that docker-containerd-shim executable is not found anywhere on the machine while there is another executable with almost the same name: "containerd-shim" under /usr/bin directory.

I restarted the service and everything is back to normal. Does creating symbolic link "docker-containerd-shim" ---> "container-shim" could solve the problem?

Docker version: 18.09.7 OS: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Answer 1

We had a similar error in our Jenkins pipeline. Reinstalling docker with a stable channel fixed it.

$ sudo add-apt-repository \
   "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
   $(lsb_release -cs) \
   stable"

( https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/ )

So we assume it's a nightly / test build problem. (don't remember which channel we had before)

Answer 2

This happened to me on an Google Compute Engine. The VM runs an gitlab-runner for CI purpose.

It seems like the nigly upgrade, which is enabled for this image ubuntu-1804-bionic-v20180723 caused a restart which lead to this misbehaviour.

[...]
Jul  9 06:30:59 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Starting Daily apt upgrade and clean activities...
Jul  9 06:31:22 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jul  9 06:31:23 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Stopping LSB: automatic crash report generation...
Jul  9 06:31:23 gitlab-runner apport[21840]:  * Stopping automatic crash report generation: apport
Jul  9 06:31:23 gitlab-runner apport[21840]:    ...done.
Jul  9 06:31:23 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Stopped LSB: automatic crash report generation.
Jul  9 06:31:23 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jul  9 06:31:24 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: message repeated 5 times: [ Reloading.]
Jul  9 06:31:25 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Starting LSB: automatic crash report generation...
Jul  9 06:31:25 gitlab-runner apport[22110]:  * Starting automatic crash report generation: apport
Jul  9 06:31:25 gitlab-runner apport[22110]:    ...done.
Jul  9 06:31:25 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Started LSB: automatic crash report generation.
Jul  9 06:31:32 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jul  9 06:31:33 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: docker.service: Current command vanished from the unit file, execution of the command list won't be resumed.
Jul  9 06:31:36 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jul  9 06:31:36 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Reloading.
Jul  9 06:31:36 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Starting containerd container runtime...
Jul  9 06:31:36 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Started containerd container runtime.
Jul  9 06:31:36 gitlab-runner systemd[1]: Reloading.
[...]

Indeed, rebooting fixed this issue.