root user has no permissions within container

[alecraso]

Issue seen in pg13

Specifically, when running a CI build in Travis (I think it happening within a Travis build is coincidental, but perhaps not). The postgres image is built using the postgres image with no tag specified. When the container is run, the following error occurs:

db-server | ls: cannot access '/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/': Operation not permitted
db-server exited with code 2

The offending line of code is the following:

postgres/13/bullseye/docker-entrypoint.sh

Line 296 in c3bf1dd

ls /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/ > /dev/null

---

After connecting to the running container (by setting the command to sleep), running ls -al shows the following output:

root@284bdcb22713:/# ls
bin   dev                         etc   lib    media  opt   root  sbin  sys  usr
boot  docker-entrypoint-initdb.d  home  lib64  mnt    proc  run   srv   tmp  var
root@284bdcb22713:/# ls -al
ls: cannot access 'lib64': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'mnt': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'root': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access '.': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'usr': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'lib': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access '..': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'run': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'proc': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'boot': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'bin': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'srv': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'opt': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'etc': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'home': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'sbin': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'sys': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'var': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'media': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'dev': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'tmp': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access '.dockerenv': Operation not permitted
ls: cannot access 'docker-entrypoint-initdb.d': Operation not permitted
total 0
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? .
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? ..
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? bin
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? boot
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? dev
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? docker-entrypoint-initdb.d
-????????? ? ? ? ?            ? .dockerenv
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? etc
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? home
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? lib
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? lib64
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? media
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? mnt
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? opt
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? proc
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? root
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? run
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? sbin
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? srv
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? sys
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? tmp
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? usr
d????????? ? ? ? ?            ? var

I don't understand why the root user has no permissions to anything in the filesystem.

The timing of this issue seems to correspond to the following commit, where the postgres change from buster to bullseye was added to the official libraries in docker:
docker-library/official-images@f21b412

I was able to get around the issue by specifying image: postgres:buster in docker-compose.yml. The root cause is likely still unsolved in the wild.

Here are the relevant sections of our docker-compose.yml:

version: "3"
services:
  db:
    image: "postgres:buster"  # << added "buster" for the workaround
    container_name: "db-server"
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: 'postgres'
      POSTGRES_DB: 'my-db'
    expose:
      - "5432"
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
    volumes:
      - database_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
...
volumes:
  database_data:
    driver: local

[wglambert]

docker-library/openjdk#465

you'll need to update Docker, runc, and likely libseccomp on your host.

See also docker-library/php#1192

[tianon]

Another workaround would be to add -buster to your image reference, but beware that the buster-based images are no longer maintained (so you won't be getting any image updates if you do so).

[alexjpm]

Upping the docker version fixed this for me

    steps:
      - checkout
      - setup_remote_docker:
          version: 20.10.6

[srus]

I got the same issue (cannot access '/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/': Operation not permitted) trying to run the official Postgres 13.4 image (postgres:13.4) on Docker 17. Problem solved after upgrading Docker to the latest version (20.10.7).