Container failed to start. Failed to start and then listen on the port defined by the PORT environment variable

Question

I built my container image, but when I try to deploy it from the gcloud command line or the Cloud Console, I get the following error: "Container failed to start. Failed to start and then listen on the port defined by the PORT environment variable."

score 35 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 29 '23 at 11:37

35

In your code, you probably aren't listening for incoming HTTP requests, or you're listening for incoming requests on the wrong port.

Or you might not have a start script and modules setup on your package.json if you are using Node.js.

As documented in the Cloud Run container runtime contract, your container must listen for incoming HTTP requests on the port that is defined by Cloud Run and provided in the $PORT environment variable.

If your container fails to listen on the expected port, the revision health check will fail, the revision will be in an error state and the traffic will not be routed to it.

For example, in Node.js with Express, you should use:

// index.js
const port = process.env.PORT || 8080;
app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log('Hello world listening on port', port);
});

// package.json
    "engines": {
        "node": "16.x"
    },
    "scripts": {
        "start": "node index.js"
    },

In Go:

port := os.Getenv("PORT")
if port == "" {
        port = "8080"
   }
log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(fmt.Sprintf(":%s", port), nil))

In python:

app.run(port=int(os.environ.get("PORT", 8080)),host='0.0.0.0',debug=True)

edited Aug 29 '23 at 11:37

Jonathan Sanchez

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answered Apr 13 '19 at 05:07

Steren

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adding this 'ENV PORT 8080 ENV HOST 0.0.0.0' to dockerfile is not a good idea? like this https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/ccKB5khCyJ/ – LOG_TAG Jul 09 '19 at 12:32
1

what is the code if we are not using express js only node js? – LOG_TAG Jul 09 '19 at 12:37
one more where we have paste that express code? server.js ? or docker file config possible? this way ?https://scotch.io/tutorials/how-to-deploy-a-node-js-app-to-heroku – LOG_TAG Jul 09 '19 at 12:57
how to write this for a vue js project? https://github.com/Timtech4u/node-cloud-run-cd/blob/master/index.js we need to find index.js in config/index.js? – LOG_TAG Jul 09 '19 at 17:43
Where should I put this line in my python code? app.run(port=int(os.environ.get("PORT", 8080)),host='0.0.0.0',debug=True) – Jefferson Santos Oct 20 '22 at 19:09
Can do this in the Dockerfile instead? – JustCurious Mar 19 '23 at 16:36

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 28 '19 at 10:43

One of the other reason may be the one which I observed. Docker images may not have the required code to run the application.

I had a Node application written in TypeScript. In order to dockerize the application all I need to do is compile the code tsc and run docker build but I though that gcloud builds submit will be taking care of that and picking the compiled code as the Dockerfile suggested in conjunction to the .dockerignore and will build my source code and submit to the repository.

But what all it did was to copy my source code and submitted to the Cloud Build and there as per the Dockerfile it dockerized my source code as compared to dockerizing the compiled code.

So remember to include a build step in Dockerfile if you are doing a source code in a language with require compilation.

Remember that enabling the build step in the Dockerfile will increase the image size every time you do a image push to the repository. It is eating the space over there and google is going to charge you for that.

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 28 '23 at 15:35

3

Try this, it worked in mine. Somehow you need to change the underlying platform it builts image upon.

docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64 -t {project-name} .

Reference: https://vincenttechblog.com/fixed-cloud-run-failed-to-start-and-then-listen-on-the-port-defined-by-the-port/

answered Feb 28 '23 at 15:35

Akash Vekariya

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If you've built on an ARM-based Mac, this does the correct cross-compilation for Cloud Run's linux/amd64 environment – Zachary Moshansky Apr 14 '23 at 22:11
1

this was it for me, thank You – jsaddwater Jun 08 '23 at 15:15

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 22 '20 at 18:47

2

Another possibility is that the docker image ends with a command that takes time to complete. By the time deployment starts the server is not yet running and the health check will hit a blank.

What kind of command would that be ? Usually any command that runs the server in dev mode. For Scala/SBT it would be sbt run or in Node it would be something like npm run dev. In short make sure to run only on the packaged build.

answered Mar 22 '20 at 18:47

inmyth

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Any idea how long a container has to start? – Fr4nc3sc0NL Dec 06 '21 at 02:29

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 20 '22 at 11:53

2

I was exposing a PORT in dockerfile , remove that automatically fixed my problem. Google injects PORT env variable so the project will pick up that Env variable.

answered Apr 20 '22 at 11:53

AKASH MATHWANI

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 27 '22 at 10:12

1

We can also specify the port number used by the image from the command line. If we are using Cloud Run, we can use the following:

gcloud run deploy --image gcr.io/<PROJECT_ID>/<APP_NAME>:<APP_VERSION> --max-instances=3 --port <PORT_NO>

Where

<PROJECT_ID> is the project ID
<APP_NAME> is the app name
<APP_VERSION> is the app version
<PORT_NO> is the port number

answered Oct 27 '22 at 10:12

Fady Ibrahim

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Thank you. This worked fabulously! – Mamun Jan 24 '23 at 22:30
You are so welcome, Mamun. – Fady Ibrahim Jan 27 '23 at 14:32

Greg Wozniak · Answer 7 · 2023-07-24T14:38:02.067

In my case this simply occurred when the app crashed and had nothing to do with the PORT. I had the process.env defined properly. There should be a link to a log record when the error is thrown, click on it and see what happened there first.

Edit: Also, it happened that my application server (Fastify) did not accept any request inside the Docker container without explicitly setting host to 0.0.0.0 but worked locally when I started the app using yarn. As silly it may sound, make sure your container is behaves as expected locally.

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 16 '21 at 23:42

The Cloud Run is generating default yaml file which has hard-coded default port in it:

spec:
  containerConcurrency: 80
  timeoutSeconds: 300
  containers:
  - image: us.gcr.io/project-test/express-image:1.0
    ports:
    - name: http1
      containerPort: 8080
    resources:
      limits:
        memory: 256Mi
        cpu: 1000m

So, we need to expose the same 8080 port or change the containerPort in yaml file and redeploy.

Here is more about that:

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 06 '22 at 13:55

A possible solution could be:

build locally
push the image on google cloud
deploy on google run

With commands:

docker build -t gcr.io/project-name/image-name
docker push gcr.io/project-name/image-name
gcloud run deploy tag-name --image gcr.io/project-name/image-name

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered May 16 '23 at 10:26

0

This usually occurs when you have connected your docker image to cloud sql instance's public ip address within the code instead of private ip address

answered May 16 '23 at 10:26

Break781

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score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Jun 07 '23 at 17:16

I was having a similar error trying to deploy a serverless function to Google Cloud Platform (GCP):

gcloud functions deploy function-name --gen2 ...

I fixed it by moving the package @google-cloud/functions-framework from dev dependencies to dependencies:

From:

{
  "devDependencies": {
    "@google-cloud/functions-framework": "^3.2.0",
  }
}

To:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "@google-cloud/functions-framework": "^3.2.0",
  }
}

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Jun 27 '23 at 14:05

In my case, I got this error when trying to deploy a GEN 2 function using a Terraform script.

The function that did not deploy had the functions-framework listed as a DEV DEPENDENCY. The error dissapeared when I moved it to the regular DEPENDENCY list

DO THIS

"dependencies": {
   "@google-cloud/functions-framework": "^3.2.0",
}

NOT THIS

"devDpendencies": {
   "@google-cloud/functions-framework": "^3.2.0",
}

Container failed to start. Failed to start and then listen on the port defined by the PORT environment variable

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