Docker Cannot link to a non running container

I need to create Rails and Mysql containers with docker-compose. When I try to create links between containers with docker-compose up, I get

> Cannot start container > 9b271c58cf6aecaf017dadaf5b Cannot link to a non running container: > /puma_db_1 AS /puma_web_1/db

Files

Dockerfile

FROM ubuntu:14.04

RUN apt-get -y update
RUN apt-get -y install git curl zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev python-software-properties libffi-dev

RUN apt-get -y install libmysqlclient-dev
RUN git clone https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv.git /root/.rbenv
RUN git clone https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build.git /root/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
RUN echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> $HOME/.profile
RUN echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> $HOME/.bashrc

RUN rbenv install 2.1.5
RUN rbenv global 2.1.5
RUN gem install rails -v 4.0.11

ADD app.tar.gz /home/
WORKDIR /home/app

RUN bundle install
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["rails", "server", "-b", "0.0.0.0"]

docker-compose.yml

db:  
  image: mysql:latest
  environment:
    MYSQL_DATABASE: app_development
    MYSQL_USER: mysql
    DATABASE_PASSWORD: onetwo
    ROOT_PASSWORD: onetwo
web:
  build: .
  command: bundle exec rails s -p 3000 -b '0.0.0.0'
  ports:
    - "4000:3000"
  links:
    - db

Most likely the db container fails to start.

Make sure it works fine by starting only the db service. You can do that with the following command:

docker-compose up db

If it appears the MySQL service is not running after this command, then you found the origin of your problem.

Not specifically related to MySQL but more the message ERROR: for <service> Cannot link to a non running container: /b2f21b869ccc_<dependency>_1 AS /<service>_1/<dependency>_1

I found that the dependency container had a different id than the one given (b2f21b869ccc in my example above)

Solved simply by running

  docker-compose up -d --force-recreate <service>

which caused it to recreate the dependency and fix the link to the correct docker id

For me, it did not help running docker-compose up db.

This did the trick for me:

sudo service docker restart

and then continuing with docker-compose up (-d)

You might try out the new features of docker networking, To do this, You must remove the link parameter in your docker-compose.yml , and initialize the container with the --x-networking option.

docker-compose --x-networking up -d

To prevent docker generate random names for the containers, which are added to the /etc/hosts file of the respective network for every container, you can use the container_name: key in the docker-compose.yml

db:  
  container_name: db
  image: mysql:latest
  environment:
    MYSQL_DATABASE: app_development
    MYSQL_USER: mysql
    DATABASE_PASSWORD: onetwo
    ROOT_PASSWORD: onetwo
web:
  container_name: web
  build: .
  command: bundle exec rails s -p 3000 -b '0.0.0.0'
  ports:
    - "4000:3000"

Issue:

• I have gotten this error whenever docker-compose successfully builds a set of Images, but one of those Imagesfails to run (e.g. launch into its own Container).

• In this case, I suspect the Image, underlying your puma_db_1 Container, is failing to run. You can find the name of this Image by running docker ps -a. That said, its name is most likely puma_db

Solution:

• To get at the cause, you can try docker-compose up <service_name> or docker-compose up db

• Alternatively, I find the error message by running docker run <image_name> more useful. In this case, that would be docker run puma_db

I had the same problem for mssql.link, as I am not using local database (rather using the one we have on staging), all I had to do is just comment that line out by editing Dockerfile script:

# DOCKER_ARGS="${DOCKER_ARGS} --link mssql-server-linux:mssql.link"

This solution may help someone or may be no one, but it sorted it for me :)

If you started the container lets say X with a link --link keen_visvesvaraya and then once X is up the linked container was stopped, but X kept running . Now if you try to docker exec into X you get this error.

Yah solution is to restart.

I had the same problem with elasticsearch - symfony - and docker

Can not link to a non-running container:/43c1d3b410db_myindex_elasticsearch_1 AS /myindex_apache_1/elasticsearch

the solution is to delete the content of the data volume

  elasticsearch: image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:5.5.2 Volumes:      - ./docker/volume/elasticsearch: /usr/share/elasticsearch/data and run docker-composer up -d again.

You can use below command Because It's working for me

docker run --name standlone-mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password -e MYSQL_DATABASE=test -e MYSQL_USER=root -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=root -d mysql:5.6

you need to modify the db: in yml file to include "POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD" in environment section

db:
  environment:
    POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD: trust