Outdated docker client failing to connect

[cat5inthecradle]

Our drone infrastructure has been failing since the Docker 29 release, which appears to have rolled up the minimum client version.

error: "Error response from daemon: client version 1.40 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.44, please upgrade your client to a newer version"

[devkimittal]

Hey @cat5inthecradle we pushed a new tag drone/autoscaler:1.14.0, this has updated docker version. Can you please try with this image?

[kolaente]

I'm still seeing this with the latest drone autoscaler:

{"error":"Error response from daemon: client version 1.24 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.44, please upgrade your client to a newer version","ip":"77.42.24.175","level":"debug","msg":"cannot connect, retry in 1m0s","name":"agent-PxN6vAYo","time":"2025-11-21T13:16:01Z"}

[devkimittal]

@kolaente just to be clear, you used latest tag or drone/autoscaler:1.14.0 ?

[kolaente]

I've used latest which reports as this with the cli (drone autoscale version):

Version: latest
Commit: 9a40e5c65dc31a7ba706b1afe6796d70f1c5acc0
Source: https://github.com/drone/autoscaler.git

It seems like that's the version that was released last year.

When I pin the docker image to 1.14.0, it fails to start:

{"error":"Binary was compiled with 'CGO_ENABLED=0', go-sqlite3 requires cgo to work. This is a stub","level":"fatal","msg":"Cannot establish database connection","time":"2025-11-21T13:25:38Z"}

[devkimittal]

checking

[devkimittal]

pushed the image with CGO_ENABLED=1
can you please pull 1.14.0 again and try it?

[kolaente]

Now it starts again, but I still see the error in the logs and the runner is stuck in the staging state:

{"error":"Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at https://77.42.24.175:2376. Is the docker daemon running?","ip":"77.42.24.175","level":"debug","msg":"cannot connect, retry in 1m0s","name":"agent-qaZ62reh","time":"2025-11-21T14:00:59Z"}

[cat5inthecradle]

We'll be likely testing this out today.

linking #149

[cat5inthecradle]

We updated drone/autoscaler, but it looks like drone/drone-runner-docker is also behind.

https://github.com/drone-runners/drone-runner-docker/blob/master/go.mod#L5C1-L6C1

An attempt at a PR:
drone-runners/drone-runner-docker#79

[devkimittal]

hey @cat5inthecradle thanks for raising the pr, we will soon upgrade the version.
Quick question, did you also face the issue that @kolaente is mentioning above? with drone/autoscaler:1.14.0 ?

[cat5inthecradle]

@devkimittal No, we only experienced the Docker API version mismatch issues.

[cat5inthecradle]

Is there any chance https://github.com/drone-runners/drone-runner-docker/blob/master/go.mod#L5C1-L6C1 could get the same fix?