docker swarm init could not choose an IP address error

Question

Experimenting with Docker Swarm with Docker Desktop for Mac. I tried this:

docker-machine create -d virtualbox node-1
docker-machine create -d virtualbox node-2
docker-machine create -d virtualbox node-3

eval $(docker-machine env node-1)

docker swarm init \
    --secret my-secret \
    --auto-accept worker \
    --listen-addr $(docker-machine ip node-1):2377

The last command (docker swarm init) returns this error:

Error response from daemon: could not choose an IP address to advertise since this system has multiple addresses

I have no idea what's going on. Anyone have any idea how to debug?

Answer 1

Update 2017-05-24:

The prior answer was for an early state of swarm mode. The secret and auto-accept options have since been removed, and the advertise-addr option has been added. This can now by done with:

docker swarm init \
  --advertise-addr $(docker-machine ip node-1)

The port will default to 2377. You can also use a network interface name instead of an IP address and swarm will lookup the IP address on that interface. The listener address is still an option but the default is to listen on all interfaces which is typically the preferred solution.

---

Original answer:

I haven't done this with docker-machine yet, but I do know that the new swarm is very sensitive to the entries in /etc/hosts. Make sure your ip and hostname are in that file, and only in a single place (not also mapped to loopback or any other internal addresses). As of RC3, they are also using the listener address for the advertise address, too, so make sure this hostname or ip can be referenced by all nodes in the swarm (pretty sure a fix is coming for that, if not already here).

To minimize the risk of issues between client and server versions, I'd also run the commands directly inside the virtualbox, rather than with docker-machine environment variables.

Answer 2

First look for the public IP of your machine on your network

ifconfig

pick the physical one like 192.168.1.x (not docker0, that is a virtual IP internal to Docker)

docker swarm init --advertise-addr 192.1.68.1.x

(will default to port 2377)

Answer 3

According to Docker´s guide: https://docs.docker.com/get-started/part4/#create-a-cluster

Getting an error about needing to use --advertise-addr?

Copy the IP address for your virtual machine by running docker-machine ls, then run the docker swarm init command again, using that IP and specifying port 2377 (the port for swarm joins) with --advertise-addr. For example:

docker-machine ssh myvm1 "docker swarm init --advertise-addr 192.168.99.100:2377"

Answer 4

Got the same error when using docker with envs to connect to the docker-machine-created machine. After docker-machine ssh <machine-name>, and doing the docker swarm init locally on the machine, I got the message about --advertise-addr as well. The local command docker swarm init --listen-addr 192.168.99.100:2377 --advertise-addr 192.168.99.100:2377 then worked.

Answer 5

Check docker --version and make sure client and server are on the same version. If they are different, use the following command to pull the boot2docker version that matches with the docker client on your machine.

docker-machine create --driver virtualbox --virtualbox-boot2docker-url https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/releases/download/v1.12.0-rc4/boot2docker-experimental.iso manager1