MS SQL Server (ubuntu docker) sqlcmd cannot run the script file

Question

I use the following command to run the script file on the MS SQL Server.

docker exec -it sqlserver /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -S localhost -d imdb -U sa -P XXX -i data.sql

And I get the error

Sqlcmd: 'data.sql': Invalid filename.

But I can run it with this

docker exec -it sqlserver /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -S localhost -d imdb -U sa -P XXX -Q "the content of data.sql"

Does anyone know why I get this error? Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

I had the same problem, but the error was because the sql script wasn't inside the container so, in order to execute the command above, you can copy the sql script to the container with the following command:

docker cp /your/local/path/data.sql sqlserver:/home/

This put the file inside the docker instance in the home folder. Even you can list the files inside that folder with:

docker exec -it sqlserver ls /home

And after that you can use the command

docker exec -it sqlserver /opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -S localhost -d testdb -U sa -P XXX -i data.sql

In my case, I had to add the following SQL command at the top of data.sql script:

USE testdb
GO

That because for some reason it wasn't executing the commands inside the testdb .

So I hope it helps you