Debugging inside of a docker container

Docker containers may not have the default setup required for debugging (especially attaching). If you're having trouble attaching, try following the steps below:

Ensure GDB is available

Your Dockerfile should include lines like so:

RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y gdb && \
    apt-get clean

Ensure GDB has the ability to ptrace

GDB (for attach) needs to be able to ptrace another process. It's how the attach works. There's two ways you can enable this.

Allow container to run privileged

You can let the container have sudo over the environment it's running in (not recommended unless you're sure the container is safe)

Then you set this in your devcontainer.json

    "runArgs": [
    "--cap-add=SYS_PTRACE",
    "--security-opt=seccomp=unconfined",
    "--privileged"
      ],
    "postCreateCommand": "echo 0 | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope",

That will let GDB ptrace another process.

Set Ptrace enabled on your host environment

Before starting docker, run this in your host environment:

echo "kernel.yama.ptrace_scope = 0" | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/10-ptrace.conf
sudo sysctl --system

That will enable ptrace in all instances that start from that environment.

For more information see the man pages on ptrace:

https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/ptrace.2.html