Fatal Error: Docker daemon failed to start with Docker Desktop

Question

I'm on MacOS 12.1. I downloaded Docker Desktop from the Docker site, but when starting it, I always get the following error:

level=error msg="Handler for GET /v1.24/services returned error: This node is not a swarm manager. Use \"docker swarm init\" or \"docker swarm join\" to connect this node to swarm and try again."

How can I resolve this problem? All the results I can find for this error already have the daemon started and working. I can't even get the daemon started. I haven't ever touched docker swarm.

Running any of the suggested commands fails because there is no running docker daemon.

Reseting to factory defaults does not resolve the issue.

Reinstalling Docker Desktop does not resolve the issue.

Reinstalling the Docker cli does not resolve the issue.

Restarting the machine does not resolve the issue.

What do I do to fix this issue?

Answer 1

What I ended up doing was uninstalling Homebrew. Apparently something there was causing issues, even though I didn't install Docker Desktop through brew, and made sure to uninstall all formulas that had anything to do with Docker. Exactly what caused this problem is a mystery still.

Answer 2

I had the same problem. And I found this log is catched from ~/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker/Data/log/vm/dockerd.log

I try to restart Docker Desktop, but this log doesn't append any content. The strange thing is error Dialog display the same content, even time! Which means Docker Desktop never try to start docker daemon.

I try to close Wi-Fi, then Docker Desktop will start normally.

Check dockerd.log again, this print the same error with new time, but Docker Desktop running normally.

So I think there is some error relate Docker Desktop network process rather than docker daemon.

Additionally, maybe docker daemon printed this error because of network driver is overlay which require a swarm node.