Jenkins: “Docker client wasn't initialized”

Question

I am trying to run the docker plugin in Jenkins but I get the error:

[Docker] ERROR: docker client is not initialized, command 'Pull image' was aborted. Check Jenkins server log which Docker client wasn't initialized

What does that mean? I have installed docker on the machine that runs jenkins.

Answer 1

There could be two reasons for that.

1. you need to make sure that docker is really up and running on jenkins server

which docker

2. make sure that your url is added in the global configuration for jenkins

manage jenkins -> configure system -> Docker Url

You can just set it to localhost:port on where your docker is listening. If you didn't set up docker to listen to tcp or you didn't know that docker offers REST api, check out http://blog.trifork.com/2013/12/24/docker-from-a-distance-the-remote-api/. It'll get you on the right path.