On ubuntu bionic: docker-model-plugin block the install

[rejeangroleau]

On ubuntu bionic, only since today (Thursday, July 10, 2025): When running the usual wget of get.docker.com piped into sh, the install script ends up failing with an error about not being able to apt-install the docker-model-plugin package.

Running the same apt command (mentioned in the install script error log) but removing the last package (docker-model-plugin) solves the issue.

But it would be nice to be able to do (as it used to work for the past years) just a simple "wget piped into sh" and succeed (without any patching afterwards).

It's ok if you want to just close and delete this issue, I just wanted to mention it to someone somewhere (since not everybobdy is using such old ubuntu versions) and it looked like here was the best place to mention it.

I hope I did not bother anyone needlessly, in that case I am sorry about it.

[vvoland]

Thanks!

Yeah that indeed happens, because we don't support these distros anymore and the model-cli package wasn't built for them. We should adjust the script so that it doesn't install that package on these distros.

https://github.com/docker/docker-install/blob/7040dd2bf115a359317b1de84de611aeabcb7bc2/install.sh#L557C40-L557C59

Are you interested in working on a PR?

[neuber77]

We had this issue running GitLab runners with docker-machine and creating instances using ubuntu bionic AMI.

Docker-machine uses the "https://get.docker.com" script to install docker. With this issue each new instance that is created by docker-machine is right after deleted because of this error in docker installation:

"error installing docker"

Running tests we found the detailed error:

E: Unable to locate package docker-model-plugin

As a workaround (while this issue is not resolved) we fixed by setting the URL of the script to a previous version without the "docker-model-plugin":

--engine-install-url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/docker/docker-install/51fb9146580c75fe07421a1451b060eea126a832/install.sh

[rejeangroleau]

@vvoland Thanks for the quick reply! I will use @neuber77 solution for now (to reference a fixed previous-version commit of the script) instead of creating a PR (mostly because I am unaware if the docker-model-plugin is missing just because they are still "working on it for older distros" or if it will be permanently not-available-for-older-distros, so excluding it from the source code line that you mentioned is not a clear win for now for me).

[vvoland]

Let me reopen, as it's still an issue :)

I'm pretty sure it won't be available for the older distros, so it doesn't make sense for the install script to try to install it.

[rejeangroleau]

I just listed the availability of those two packages (for the "version 23 check" condition) and here it is:

lsb_dist	dist_version	docker-buildx-plugin	docker-model-plugin
debian	bookworm	present	present
debian	bullseye	present	present
debian	buster	present	missing
debian	jessie	missing	missing
debian	stretch	missing	missing
debian	trixie	present	present
debian	wheezy	missing	missing
raspbian	bookworm	missing	missing
raspbian	bullseye	missing	missing
raspbian	buster	missing	missing
raspbian	jessie	missing	missing
raspbian	stretch	missing	missing
ubuntu	artful	missing	missing
ubuntu	bionic	present	missing
ubuntu	cosmic	missing	missing
ubuntu	disco	missing	missing
ubuntu	eoan	missing	missing
ubuntu	focal	present	missing
ubuntu	groovy	missing	missing
ubuntu	hirsute	missing	missing
ubuntu	impish	missing	missing
ubuntu	jammy	present	present
ubuntu	kinetic	present	missing
ubuntu	lunar	present	missing
ubuntu	mantic	present	missing
ubuntu	noble	present	present
ubuntu	oracular	present	present
ubuntu	plucky	present	present
ubuntu	trusty	missing	missing
ubuntu	xenial	missing	missing
ubuntu	yakkety	missing	missing
ubuntu	zesty	missing	missing

So the "version 23 check" condition could look like:

	if version_gte "23.0"; then
		case "$lsb_dist.$dist_version" in
			debian.trixie|debian.bookworm|debian.bullseye)
				pkgs="$pkgs docker-buildx-plugin docker-model-plugin"
				;;
			debian.buster)
				pkgs="$pkgs docker-buildx-plugin"
				;;
			ubuntu.plucky|ubuntu.oracular|ubuntu.jammy|ubuntu.noble)
				pkgs="$pkgs docker-buildx-plugin docker-model-plugin"
				;;
			ubuntu.mantic|ubuntu.lunar|ubuntu.kinetic|ubuntu.focal|ubuntu.bionic)
				pkgs="$pkgs docker-buildx-plugin"
				;;
		esac
	fi