When you use docker, you may see such error when you launched your docker container like me.

$ docker run lewuathe/test
standard_init_linux.go:187: exec user process caused "exec format error"

I found a workaround for this now. In this post, I’ll try to explain how to resolve the issue.

Table of Contents

• Dockerfile
• shebang

My Dockerfile is this.

FROM ubuntu

ADD test.sh /tmp
WORKDIR /tmp

ENTRYPOINT ["./test.sh"]

The shell script of entry point is here.

#!/bin/bash

echo "This is a script"

Umm, there is no weird point to me. Actually the test.sh works as expected in host OS (macOS).

$ ./test.sh
This is a script

I tried to replace ENTRYPOINT with /bin/bash and execute the test script.

FROM ubuntu

ADD test.sh /tmp
WORKDIR /tmp

# ENTRYPOINT ["./test.sh"]
ENTRYPOINT ["/bin/bash"]

$ docker run -it lewuathe/test
root:/tmp# ls
test.sh
root:/tmp# ./test.sh
This is a script

Hmm, after all it works. Why cannot I launch test script from ENTRYPOINT directly.

shebang

The root cause was shebang. Shebang (#!/bin/bash) should be put on the first line because first bytes was checked by kernel.

So after I rewrote test.sh to remove first empty line, the image worked as expected.

#!/bin/bash

echo "This is a script"

But I’m still not sure why test.sh works in host OS or through bash in Docker container.

A catch image came from docker.com.