Docker for Windows mssql-server-linux:latest fails to run due to memory limit

[wsmelton]

I may be doing this wrong...

Docker: 18.04.0-ce-win62 (17151)
image: microsoft/mssql-server-linux:latest

I'm just trying to run the following:

docker run -e "ACCEPT_EULA=Y" -e "SA_PASSWORD=supersecret" -p 1417:1433 --name sql17 --platform linux -d microsoft/mssql-server-linux:latest

I can see the container in VS Code created and started, but then immediately stops. I check the logs:

docker logs sql17 --tail 50 -f
sqlservr: This program requires a machine with at least 2000 megabytes of memory.

So I saw mention in another issue about -e "MSSQL_MEMORY_LIMIT_MB=3072" so I tried that but still gets the same error.

Am I doing something wrong?

[twright-msft]

if you are literally using supersecret as your password it isnt meeting complexity requirements. You can run it without -d to see the output and see if there is anything useful there.

[wsmelton]

Oh, you twisted my arm...I'll release my super secret password...but all the output I get is the same.

[wsmelton]

I'm pulling down the Ubunut:latest image to just see if I can get it to run. It may be just an issue with trying to run Linux over Windows mode...

[twright-msft]

Ah ha! You are hitting this issue where Linux Containers on Windows (LCOW) is limited to max 2GB of memory.
microsoft/opengcs#145

[wsmelton]

I wonder why the that image is an issue because this works with no issue:

docker run -it --platform linux ubuntu:latest

[twright-msft]

The vanilla ubuntu VM can probably easily run with less than 2GB of RAM. SQL Server requires 2 GB+ of RAM. The error message you see there comes from sqlservr. It's a resource prerequisite check we do on start up of the sqlservr process.

[georgedorn]

I've read that there are options to reduce the memory usage of SQL Server. Is there a way to set those via the docker env file?

[twright-msft]

You can control the amount of memory that SQL Server uses by passing the MSSQL_MEMORY_LIMIT_MB environment variable. SQL Server on Linux does need a minimum of 2GB of memory though for now.

[twright-msft]

Looks like the option to configure the VM memory is back in the more recent versions of Docker for Windows. Can you please try changing this from the default 2 GB to 4 GB or something and try running SQL Server on Linux again? Should work now.

[wsmelton]

Those options are not available under Windows Mode. I'm using the platform option to run a Linux container under Windows Mode.

[eric-davis]

I'm running into the same extremely annoying issue.

[alexandrupascanu]

Hello,
I am facing the same issue using the latest docker version( 18.09.0-ce-beta1), i can;t start sqlsrv linux contaner: "sqlservr: This program requires a machine with at least 2000 megabytes of memory."
I don't what to to fix it!.Can you help me out with this one,please?
Thank you!

[tomasfejfar]

The 2GB minimum does not seem sensible to me.

Does really empty sqlsrv needs that much memory just to start? I understand there may be some (potentially big) performance degradation for bigger tables and bigger indices, but it does not seem sensible to beef up the machine just to create a table with 20 rows for Travis build. Production (!) and fast enough MySQL/MariaDB for small web can run on 512M DigitalOcean droplet along with httpd and standard Debian.

[twright-msft]

@tomasfejfar There's a bit more to it than just simply running SQL Server. Keep in mind that SQL Server on Linux runs inside of a platform abstraction layer (PAL). More detailed reading. The additional memory required to run the PAL itself is a big part of the overall memory demands of running SQL Server in as small of a footprint as possible. On a production system with 1 TB of RAM available the extra 512MB-1 GB to run the PAL is negligible, but when you are trying to run some CI tests on as small of a footprint as possible, it's completely understandable to want to minimize the memory consumption. We're working on reducing the memory footprint, but it will take some time. Hope that provides a bit more context.

[tomasfejfar]

That's much more context, thanks. And the link provided me with much deeper understanding. My understanding was pretty much limited to "it's probably just C, so not much different from other RDBMS".