How to fix Gitlab CI error during connect: Post http://docker:2375/v1.40/auth: dial tcp: lookup docker on ... no such host

Problem:

In your GitLab CI jobs, you see this error message while trying to run some docker command:

error during connect: Post http://docker:2375/v1.40/auth: dial tcp: lookup docker on 192.168.178.1:53: no such host

Solution

This error occurs with docker-based gitlab runners such as the one we’re that are configured using a docker executor. The error message means that the inner docker container doesn’t have a connection to the host docker daemon.

In order to fix this, set these options in [runners.docker] in your gitlab-runner config.toml:

privileged = true
volumes = ["/cache", "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock"]

A valid config.toml looks like this:

concurrent = 1
check_interval = 0

[session_server]
  session_timeout = 1800

[[runners]]
  name = "CoreOS-Haar-Runner"
  url = "https://gitlab.techoverflow.net/"
  token = "bemaiBie8usahMoo9ish"
  executor = "docker"
  [runners.custom_build_dir]
  [runners.cache]
    [runners.cache.s3]
    [runners.cache.gcs]
    [runners.cache.azure]
  [runners.docker]
    tls_verify = false
    image = "docker:stable"
    privileged = true
    disable_entrypoint_overwrite = false
    oom_kill_disable = false
    disable_cache = false
    volumes = ["/cache", "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock"]
    shm_size = 0

Why this works

Adding "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock" allows the inner docker container running inside the gitlab-runner to access the outer (host) docker daemon. Without this, it tries to connect to the docker default URL, i.e. http://docker:2375. This URL can’t be resolved via DNS (the DNS server in my case is 192.168.178.1, the DNS standard port being 53), hence docker prints the error message listed above.