MariaDB 10.8.3 in Docker: can't initialize timers

Question

This error happens even after clearing the Docker image cache:

$ docker run -it --rm mariadb:10.8.3
2022-06-15 11:28:14+00:00 [Note] [Entrypoint]: Entrypoint script for MariaDB Server 1:10.8.3+maria~jammy started.
2022-06-15 11:28:14+00:00 [ERROR] [Entrypoint]: mariadbd failed while attempting to check config
        command was: mariadbd --verbose --help --log-bin-index=/tmp/tmp.EUcxIEz4Yz
        Can't initialize timers

10.8.3 is currently the latest image on Docker Hub. The image tag is ea81af801379. This is on 64-bit Ubuntu 18.04. The server has low CPU load, 100+GB of free RAM, and terabytes of free disk space.

I have an existing database that was already touched by this version and that I wouldn't want to risk downgrading.

I have seen this issue but there's no reason that MariaDB would fail to create a thread.

How can I solve this?

Answer 1

The solution is to change the MariaDB version to avoid version 10.8.3, for example by forcing mariadb:10.8.2 or mariadb:10.7, or to set --security-opt seccomp=unconfined

If your Dockerfile or docker-compose are referencing mariadb:latest or mariadb:10 in Summer 2022, that's pointing to mariadb:10.8.3.

Contrary to the post by @Arno, the Docker version is not the issue. I am running Docker 20.10.17 and the problem persists.

You can also directly run with an updated security profile:

docker run --security-opt seccomp=/etc/docker/profiles-seccomp-scmp-act-trace.json

Hopefully a fix will be in the MariaDB 10.8.3 release.

https://github.com/MariaDB/mariadb-docker/issues/434

Answer 2

The issue was reported on GitHub. Upgrading Docker seems to fix it.

Answer 3

I had the same issue running MariaDB (latest) on Gitlab CI using Test Containers for Java.

Using the seccomp=unconfined security option - as discussed in the Github reported linked by @Arno solved this for me.

Enabling this through testcontainers-java is a bit weird, so here's the flow if readers encounter the same issue with Test Containes:

var container = new MariaDBContainer<>("mariadb:latest")
.withCreateContainerCmdModifier(cmd -> {
    var cfg = cmd.getHostConfig();
    List<String> seclist = Objects.requireNonNullElseGet(cfg.getSecurityOpts(),
            LinkedList::new);
    seclist.add("seccomp=unconfined");
    cfg.withSecurityOpts(seclist);
});

Answer 4

This same question was asked on StackOverflow - please see my response there https://stackoverflow.com/a/72467817

To summarize, your docker version is likely < 20.10.10, which is the minimum required to use Jammy-based images. MariaDB > 10.8.2 uses Jammy, so there's a conflict there.

Upgrading docker is really the only correct option at this point - MariaDB 10.7 ends support soon on 2023-02-14, and Docker 19.03 (the release before 20.10) went EOL on 2021-07-21.