bash: docker: command not found

Question

I'm accessing Ubuntu 19.10 running as a virtual machine. In the installation process I installed Docker (as a snap). Everything is fine when I log in using SSH, but this will fail:

$ ssh user@host 'docker info'

returning: bash: docker: command not found. Other commands like $ ssh user@host date or $ ssh user@host 'ls -l' woks fine.

Any suggestions?

Solution

Create a symlink:

sudo ln -s /snap/bin/docker /usr/bin/docker

You could also check what your path variable shows using the same command, but instead of ls -l use echo $PATH command. You could try to place symlinks to PATH mentioned there.

Set the PATH on the server in ~/.ssh/environment (needs to be enabled by PermitUserEnvironment yes in sshd_config).

https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/332532/341457

Comments

[Lutz]

have you tried ssh user@host '/snap/bin/docker info'?

[chrwahl]

Thanks @Lutz. That works! So, I'm missing a link somewhere? Would be nice if I could just write 'docker'.

[Lutz]

Yes the link is that snap installs everything in /snap and if you just ssh into the server this is not part of the environment variable PATH. This variable is used for searching executable files, if no path is given(e.g. calling docker vs /snap/sbin/docker).