How to fix standard_init_linux.go: exec user process caused: no such file or directory in Docker

First, verify whether line endings are the culprit. You can inspect your script file using:

file entrypoint.sh

If it shows "CRLF line terminators" or "with CRLF", that's the problem. You can also check with:

cat -A entrypoint.sh | head -5

If you see ^M at the end of lines, those are carriage return characters from Windows.

The easiest fix is to convert the file to Unix line endings:

dos2unix entrypoint.sh

If dos2unix is not installed, you can install it:

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-get install dos2unix

# macOS
brew install dos2unix

# Alpine
apk add dos2unix

If you cannot install dos2unix, use sed to strip carriage returns:

sed -i 's/\r$//' entrypoint.sh

On macOS, you may need:

sed -i '' 's/\r$//' entrypoint.sh

You can also fix this directly in your editor:

VS Code: Look at the bottom-right status bar. Click on "CRLF" and select "LF", then save the file.

Notepad++: Go to Edit > EOL Conversion > Unix (LF), then save.

JetBrains IDEs: File > Line Separators > LF - Unix and macOS

If you cannot control the source files (e.g., they come from a Windows-only environment), fix them during the Docker build:

# For Debian/Ubuntu based images
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y dos2unix \
    && dos2unix /app/entrypoint.sh \
    && apt-get remove -y dos2unix && apt-get autoremove -y

# For Alpine based images
RUN apk add --no-cache dos2unix \
    && dos2unix /app/entrypoint.sh \
    && apk del dos2unix

Alternatively, use sed without installing additional packages:

RUN sed -i 's/\r$//' /app/entrypoint.sh

Prevent this issue from recurring by configuring Git. Create or update .gitattributes in your repository root:

# Force LF line endings for shell scripts
*.sh text eol=lf

# Force LF for other common script types
*.bash text eol=lf
*.zsh text eol=lf
Dockerfile text eol=lf
docker-entrypoint* text eol=lf

Alternatively, configure Git globally:

git config --global core.autocrlf input

This converts CRLF to LF on commit but does not modify files on checkout.

After fixing the line endings, you must rebuild the image for changes to take effect:

docker build --no-cache -t your-image:tag .

The --no-cache flag ensures Docker does not use cached layers that might contain the old file.

If line endings are not the issue, the problem might be missing dynamic libraries. This is common with Go binaries on Alpine:

# Option 1: Build a static binary (Go)
ENV CGO_ENABLED=0
RUN go build -o /app/myapp .

# Option 2: Use a compatible base image
FROM golang:1.21-alpine AS builder
# ... build steps ...

FROM alpine:3.18
RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat
COPY --from=builder /app/myapp /app/myapp

You can check what libraries a binary needs:

ldd /app/myapp