Cannot connect to docker

[windware-ono]

I've set up SSM on a machine and added another device on the same network and agent seems to be fine, but I cannot find any containers on that host.

The document says, it should be automatically found but what is the criteria for this to work?
SSM is installed on 10.0.0.1 in a docker and the target machine is 10.0.0.2, which I can SSH into from squirrelserversmanager-server-1 container and the agent is deployed there but when I try the connection test, the docker part never seems to do anything.

I've tried both paramiko and ssh as connection method and the connecting user can use the docker command as it belongs to docker group as well as being able to sudo to root.

On an added note, I also cannot do Connect to host via its SSH web interface, despite ansible being able to run with the given credential.

Please let me know what I can try.

[SquirrelDeveloper]

Hi @windware-ono . Thanks for the report
You can run a "Connection test" in Inventory / / Connection Test -> "Run connection tests".
Additionally, please provide the server logs (In the left panel "Logs"). You can filter on either module= "SsmSshDockerAgent" or "Watcher"

[windware-ono]

I've tried the tests.
Thanks for checking.

Connection test (Docker connection test has the indicator moving indefinitely)

Server logs (SsmSshDockerAgent)

Server logs (Watcher)

[SquirrelDeveloper]

Unfortunately, there is no info here that can help.
I am gonna publish v0.1.22 with a timeout on the check docker connection, so we may get more infos

[windware-ono]

I re-ran the connection test and looked at the logs without filtering with a module and this is what I got. Perhaps, this could mean something?

[SquirrelDeveloper]

Unfortunately not, but the new version is released I encourage you to test it. (I recommend starting from a clean install)

[windware-ono]

New version with a clean install didn't do much different. Watcher log was slightly different but the errors were same with "request entity too large" and 500 errors.

[SquirrelDeveloper]

Alright. I am gonna implement a small diagnostic module so we can have more infos

[SquirrelDeveloper]

What kind of connection to the device do you use? Private keys, user/pwd, ... ?
Is your docker.sock protected with keys?

[windware-ono]

I'm connecting to the target machine with user/password who has access to docker.sock on the target machine. docker.sock is not protected other than being 660 permission by its default.

[windware-ono]

When I get back, I'll try with stock Ubuntu 24.04 and see how it will do, though I don't believe I'm doing anything special with my set up.

[windware-ono]

I've spun up 2 new Ubuntu 24.04 and only installed Docker on both machines with a few test containers and installed SSM on the first machine.

It now did show up containers but now it said that it couldn't find playbooks and couldn't do the pinging like on the screenshot.

Installing the agent also failed saying the playbook cannot be found.
I cleaned SSM data folder and restarted SSM but it was still having the same error.

[windware-ono]

I no longer saw the errors posted before in the logs, except for the logs that say playbooks aren't found.

[SquirrelDeveloper]

It seems there is a bug here. Could you try to reset the playbooks module here?

[SquirrelDeveloper]

New version is being released has we speak, hopefully fixing it!

[windware-ono]

On a stock Ubuntu 24.04, it worked fine for both the pinging and the docker connection with a clean install of SSM.
But with my own servers, removing the data and doing a clean install of SSM didn't fix the docker connection with the latest release.
Let me know if there's anything I should check.

Also, I found several problems but let me know if I should get these into separate issues.

• I cannot see 'Live Logs' of the containers, despite having it listed as running and I checked that they're running on the host.
• Clicking on Stop will not immediately give feedback and notification only shows up after some seconds when the container actually stopped, making it confusing whether if any action is being taken on click.
• When the container is actually stopped, the list still says Running.
• The port of the link says undefined, invalidating the link. (Probably not good to link to it directly in case it is hosted under reverse proxy.)

[SquirrelDeveloper]

Thank for your feedbacks, those are really usefull. I will fix them along the way

[windware-ono]

I did another testing by spawning a new Ubuntu 24.04 instance and first tried to connect to the server with root and both pinging and docker connection succeeds.

Next, I tried to create a new user and gave it sudo access without password.
It no longer can do the pinging nor docker connection, despite being able to sudo.

Next, I put the new user into docker group and docker connection succeeded but the pinging still doesn't work.

Are you testing with root user connection?

[SquirrelDeveloper]

Hi!
Unless I misundertood, it works on ubuntu with a simple user, even without sudo access.

# Create a new user
sudo adduser testuser
sudo usermod -aG docker testuser
# Ensure docker access
docker ps

Fill in SSM

Both docker & Ansible ping are working.

[windware-ono]

I was expecting that sudo would give the regular user access to /run/docker.sock, thus was suffice to allow docker connection as I would expect on terminal without having the user in docker group.

I'm not sure why the regular user with sudo access can no longer get the pinging to work...

Also, on my own server, having the user in docker group nor root user still won't make the docker connection successful and I haven't yet figured out how it's different from a stock Ubuntu install.

[SquirrelDeveloper]

SSM use sudo through Ansible only when necessary, meaning when a playbook has a become: true option.
I have added a small tool to help debug the different connexion issues in inventory//Configuration