standard_init_linux.go:178: exec user process caused “exec format error”

docker started throwing this error:

standard_init_linux.go:178: exec user process caused “exec format error”

whenever I run a specific docker container with CMD or ENTRYPOINT, with no regard to any changes to the file other then removing CMD or ENTRYPOINT. here is the docker file I have been working with which worked perfectly until about an hour ago:

FROM buildpack-deps:jessie

ENV PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH

ENV LANG C.UTF-8

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends 
        tcl 
        tk 
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

ENV GPG_KEY 0D96DF4D4110E5C43FBFB17F2D347EA6AA65421D
ENV PYTHON_VERSION 3.6.0

ENV PYTHON_PIP_VERSION 9.0.1

RUN set -ex 
    && buildDeps=' 
        tcl-dev 
        tk-dev 
    ' 
    && apt-get update && apt-get install -y $buildDeps --no-install-recommends && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* 
    
    && wget -O python.tar.xz "https://www.python.org/ftp/python/${PYTHON_VERSION%%[a-z]*}/Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tar.xz" 
    && wget -O python.tar.xz.asc "https://www.python.org/ftp/python/${PYTHON_VERSION%%[a-z]*}/Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tar.xz.asc" 
    && export GNUPGHOME="$(mktemp -d)" 
    && gpg --keyserver ha.pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys "$GPG_KEY" 
    && gpg --batch --verify python.tar.xz.asc python.tar.xz 
    && rm -r "$GNUPGHOME" python.tar.xz.asc 
    && mkdir -p /usr/src/python 
    && tar -xJC /usr/src/python --strip-components=1 -f python.tar.xz 
    && rm python.tar.xz 
    
    && cd /usr/src/python 
    && ./configure 
        --enable-loadable-sqlite-extensions 
        --enable-shared 
    && make -j$(nproc) 
    && make install 
    && ldconfig 
    
    && if [ ! -e /usr/local/bin/pip3 ]; then : 
        && wget -O /tmp/get-pip.py 'https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py' 
        && python3 /tmp/get-pip.py "pip==$PYTHON_PIP_VERSION" 
        && rm /tmp/get-pip.py 
    ; fi 
    && pip3 install --no-cache-dir --upgrade --force-reinstall "pip==$PYTHON_PIP_VERSION" 
    && [ "$(pip list |tac|tac| awk -F '[ ()]+' '$1 == "pip" { print $2; exit }')" = "$PYTHON_PIP_VERSION" ] 
    
    && find /usr/local -depth 
        ( 
            ( -type d -a -name test -o -name tests ) 
            -o 
            ( -type f -a -name '*.pyc' -o -name '*.pyo' ) 
        ) -exec rm -rf '{}' + 
    && apt-get purge -y --auto-remove $buildDeps 
    && rm -rf /usr/src/python ~/.cache

RUN cd /usr/local/bin 
    && { [ -e easy_install ] || ln -s easy_install-* easy_install; } 
    && ln -s idle3 idle 
    && ln -s pydoc3 pydoc 
    && ln -s python3 python 
    && ln -s python3-config python-config

RUN pip install uwsgi

RUN mkdir /config

RUN mkdir /logs

ENV HOME /var/www

WORKDIR /config

ADD conf/requirements.txt /config

RUN pip install -r /config/requirements.txt

ADD conf/wsgi.py /config

ADD conf/wsgi.ini /config

ADD conf/__init__.py /config

ADD start.sh /bin/start.sh

RUN chmod +x /bin/start.sh

EXPOSE 8000

ENTRYPOINT ["start.sh", "uwsgi", "--ini", "wsgi.ini"]

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

I forgot to put

#!/bin/bash

at the top of the sh file, problem solved.

Method 2

This can happen if you’re trying to run an x86 built image on an arm64/aarch64 machine.

You’ll need to rebuild the image using the corresponding architecture

Method 3

Add this code

#!/usr/bin/env bash

at the top of your script file.

Method 4

This error could also occur if an image was built on a MacBook Pro with a Apple M1 Pro chip, which is ARM-based, so by default the Docker build command targets arm64.

Docker in fact detects the Apple M1 Pro platform as linux/arm64/v8

Specifying the platform to both the build command and version tag was enough:

# Build for ARM64 (default)
docker build -t <image-name>:<version>-arm64 .

# Build for ARM64 
docker build --platform=linux/arm64 -t <image-name>:<version>-arm64 .

# Build for AMD64
docker build --platform=linux/amd64 -t <image-name>:<version>-amd64 .

Environment

Chip: Apple M1 Pro, 10 Cores (8 performance and 2 efficiency)
Docker version 20.10.12, build e91ed57

Method 5

If the Docker image is built on an M1 chip and uploaded to be deployed by Fargate then you’ll notice this container error in Fargate:

standard_init_linux.go:228: exec user process caused: exec format error

There’s a couple ways to work around this. You can either:

• Build your docker image using:

docker buildx build --platform=linux/amd64 -t image-name:version .

• Update your Dockerfile’s FROM statements with

FROM --platform=linux/amd64 BASE_IMAGE:VERSION

Method 6

Got the same Error, i was building ARM image after changing to AMD. Issue Fixed

That error usually means you’re trying to run this amd64 image on a non-amd64 host (such as 32-bit or ARM).

TRY BUILDING by using buildx and specifying –platform linux/amd64

Sample Command

docker buildx  build -t ranjithkumarmv/node-12.13.0-awscli . --platform linux/amd64

Method 7

Another possible reason for this could be if the file is saved with Windows line endings (CRLF). Save it with Unix line endings (LF) and the file will be found.

Method 8

Extending to the accepted answer:

For an alpine (without bash) image:

#!/bin/ash

at the top of the sh file, solves the problem.

Method 9

If you’re getting this in AWS ECS, you probably built the image with an Apple M1 Pro chip. In your Dockerfile, you can add the following:
FROM --platform=linux/amd64 <image>:<tag>.

If you’re using a sub-image, ex: FROM <parent_image_you_created>:<tag> you’ll want to make sure the <parent_image_you_created>:<tag> was built with FROM --platform=linux/amd64 <image>:<tag>.

Method 10

For those trying to build images for aarch64 or armv7l architectures on amd64 Linux system and running into the same error: check if qemu-user-static package is installed. If not, install it with sudo apt install qemu-user-static on Ubuntu/Debian/Mint etc, or with sudo dnf install qemu-user-static on Fedora

Method 11

None of this worked for me. Why is no one mentioning the BOM?

This error occurs if you have a Byte Order Mark at the start of your file.

You can check with:

head -n 1 yourscript | LC_ALL=C od -tc

In Notepad++ you can save text in UTF-8 without the BOM by selecting the appropriate option in the Encoding menu:

Encoding > UTF-8

Method 12

I have faced same issue in RHEL 7.3, docker 17.05-ce when running offline loaded image. It appeared the default storage driver of RHEL/CentOS changed from device-mapper to overlay. Reverting back the driver to devicemapper fixed the problem.

dockerd --storage-driver=devicemapper

or

/etc/docker/daemon.json
{
  "storage-driver": "devicemapper"
}

Method 13

One more possibility is that #!/bin/bash is not in the very first line. There must be really nothing before it (no empty lines, nothing).

Method 14

Not a direct answer to the question asked. Although I got the error while calling “docker-compose up” to bring my nodejs application up. Realized that in my “Dockerfile” i had CMD ["./server.js"].

To fix i replaced it with CMD ["npm","start"] and that solved the issue. Hope if someone lands here for this exception may find this useful.

Method 15

In my case, I “drained” my ECS instanced and “activated” them back again and thereafter the error vanished.

Method 16

If you are using an IBR1700 router which runs containers, you may get a similar error when in the router command line after using command container logs test (where test is the name of the container).

To fix this you need to build the application so it runs on a different platform. It uses linux/arm/v7.

docker run -it --rm --privileged docker/binfmt:a7996909642ee92942dcd6cff44b9b95f08dad64
docker buildx create --name mybuilder
docker buildx use mybuilder
docker buildx build --platform linux/arm/v7 --no-cache -t <username/repository>:<tag> . --push

Pushing to the repository with this build means it can run on the router.

https://github.com/cradlepoint/container-samples

Method 17

For me, my ECS cluster was arm64 architecture, but my docker image was showing amd64 architecture. I rebuilt my docker image: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/multi-arch/

Method 18

I had similar problem standard_init_linux.go:228: exec user process caused: exec format error, but nothing helped from the answers. Eventually i found that it was old docker version 17.09.0-ce which is also default on the Circle CI, so just after changing it to the most recent one problem was solved.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0