Error: Could not create NMClient object: Could not connect: No such file or directory

I'm trying to run an electron app inside a docker container on my MacOS. I need "network manager" for the project because the electron app has a dependency on it. I am using Node 14 as base image.

I installed network manager using "apt install network-manager" and it installed: nmcli tool, version 1.14.6

But when I run nmcli command, I get the error: Error: Could not create NMClient object: Could not connect: No such file or directory.

I've tried looking around a lot, even asked AI tools for help, but I can't find a proper explanation or any solution.

I tried running the project on Ubuntu 16.04 base image and there after installing network-manager, the nmcli command worked fine (nmcli tool, version 1.2.6). So I decided to use that but only to realise that the electron app I am trying to setup, has a peer dependency to libgpiod package and that's not available for Ubuntu 16. I tried building it from source, didn't work.

I also tried to compile network-manager ver 1.2.6 in my node image, but that didn't work either.

Could someone help me understand how I can get nmcli command work in my node image? Or explain me why would it not work in node image but would work in ubuntu image?

Solution

The project as you've described it can't usefully run in a Docker container. Run it directly on the host system.

NetworkManager is a tool to manage the host's network environment. Its primary interface appears to be via a D-Bus socket; this path is hard to access from in a container. (See for example DBus communication from docker to host and reverse.) Similarly, Electron is a toolkit to write desktop GUI applications using the Javascript Web ecosystem, but running GUI applications in Docker is tricky (Can you run GUI applications in a Linux Docker container?).

In theory, if you (a) run as root on the host, so you can access the Docker socket; (b) bind-mount /var/run/dbus to get access to the host's DBus socket; and (c) do the extended work to get access to the host display; then it might be possible to run this

xauth nlist :0 | sed -e 's/^..../ffff/' | xauth -f /tmp/docker.xauth nmerge -
sudo docker run \
  -v /var/run/dbus:/var/run/dbus \
  -v /tmp/.X0-unix:/tmp/.X0-unix \
  -v /tmp/docker.xauth:/root/.Xauthority
  -e DISPLAY=:0.0 \
  your-image

This will only work on a native Linux host system, and then only if you're using the Docker Engine directly and not Docker Desktop.

Running outside a container will be far easier, particularly since this last command block is something your end user will need to run every time they run the application.