Resolving the Kitematic install error

Kitematic, which is now a part of Docker actually fails to initialize (at least on my Mac)

So this is what this looks like

The log snippets actually list out why the launch is actually failing

Command failed: /usr/local/bin/docker-machine -D create -d virtualbox --virtualbox-memory 2048 default,Docker Machine Version: 0.16.0, build 702c267f,Found binary path at /usr/local/bin/docker-machine,Launching plugin server for driver virtualbox,Plugin server listening at address 127.0.0.1:53892,() Calling .GetVersion,Using API Version 1,() Calling .SetConfigRaw,() Calling .GetMachineName,(flag-lookup) Calling .GetMachineName,(flag-lookup) Calling .DriverName,(flag-lookup) Calling .GetCreateFlags,Found binary path at /usr/local/bin/docker-machine,Launching plugin server for driver virtualbox,Plugin server listening at address 127.0.0.1:53898,() Calling .GetVersion,Using API Version 1,() Calling .SetConfigRaw,() Calling .GetMachineName,(default) Calling .GetMachineName,(default) Calling .DriverName,(default) Calling .GetCreateFlags,(default) Calling .SetConfigFromFlags,Reading certificate data from /Users/ayan/.docker/machine/certs/ca.pem,Decoding PEM data...,Parsing certificate...,Reading certificate data from /Users/ayan/.docker/machine/certs/cert.pem,Decoding PEM data...,Parsing certificate...,(default) Calling .PreCreateCheck,(default) DBG | COMMAND: /usr/local/bin/VBoxManage --version,(default) DBG | STDOUT:,(default) DBG | {,(default) DBG | 5.2.22r126460,(default) DBG | },(default) DBG | STDERR:,(default) DBG | {,(default) DBG | },Error with pre-create check: "failure getting a version tag from the Github API response (are you getting rate limited by Github?)",open /Users/ayan/.docker/machine/machines/default/default/Logs/VBox.log: no such file or directory,notifying bugsnag: [Error with pre-create check: "failure getting a version tag from the Github API response (are you getting rate limited by Github?)"],

So what this looks like, is that it’s trying to download the Boot2Docker ISO. On checking the repo, we see that the repo is actually deprecated

https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker#readme

Boot2Docker is officially in maintenance mode -- it is recommended that users transition from Boot2Docker over to Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows instead.

What this means concretely is new Docker releases, kernel updates, etc, but concerted attempts to keep new features/functionality to an absolute minimum to ensure continued maintainability for the few folks who can't yet transition to the better-suited Docker for Windows / Docker for Mac products (Windows 7 users who can't Docker for Windows at all, Windows 10 Home users who thus can't Hyper-V, VirtualBox users who thus can't Hyper-V, etc etc).

See docker/machine#4537 for some useful discussion around Docker Machine also being in a similar state.

Which is interesting. This does have the ISO that can still be downloaded though. So if we click on this link, we see that the download actually starts

https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/releases/download/v18.09.1-rc1/boot2docker.iso

Which means if we can either manually download the ISO and place it in the location the installer is expecting, it would actually skip the github step and proceed with install (at least theoretically!)

So here goes. First, find out the user for which you want to install or configure the environment (in my case I have just one user)

ayans-mbp:~ ayan$ ls /Users
Guest	Shared	ayan

Now, to use curl to get the ISO in the install location

ayans-mbp:~ ayan$ curl -Lo /Users/ayan/.docker/machine/cache/boot2docker.iso https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/releases/download/v18.09.1-rc1/boot2docker.iso
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100   605    0   605    0     0    614      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--   613
100 45.0M  100 45.0M    0     0  1028k      0  0:00:44  0:00:44 --:--:-- 1300k

So now, time to fire up Kitematic and see if that makes a difference – note my Virtualbox is installed and working fine – tested that out with Vagrant and works just fine

So fire up Kitematic

Wait for the machine to come up

Install complete screen asks you to log in to the Docker hub – which I will skip

This is how the Kitematic interface looks like! Pretty neat!

Stay tuned for more!