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Replicated services fail to start with exit code 125

Troubleshooting


Problem

When you restart Replicated services during Terraform Enterprise maintenance or troubleshooting, the replicated, replicated-operator, and replicated-ui services may fail and exit with exit status 125.

The systemd status shows the services are stuck in an activating (auto-restart) state with an exit-code result.

$ systemctl status replicated replicated-ui replicated-operator
● replicated.service - Replicated Service
   ##...
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2023-01-16 23:33:18 UTC; 255ms ago
   ##...
   Main PID: 395215 (code=exited, status=125)

● replicated-ui.service - Replicated Service
   ##...
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2023-01-16 23:33:18 UTC; 301ms ago
   ##...
   Main PID: 395201 (code=exited, status=125)

● replicated-operator.service - Replicated Operator Service
   ##...
   Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2023-01-16 23:33:18 UTC; 290ms ago
   ##...
   Main PID: 395202 (code=exited, status=125)

Viewing the logs for these units shows that the docker run commands failed because the required container images could not be found.

$ journalctl -u replicated -u replicated-ui -u replicated-operator -n 18
## Logs begin at Mon 2023-01-16 19:16:40 UTC, end at Mon 2023-01-16 23:41:38 UTC. --
##...
replicated-ui.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=125/n/a
replicated-ui.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
docker[402031]: docker: Error response from daemon: manifest for replicated/replicated:current not found: manifest unknown: manifest unknown.
docker[402031]: See 'docker run --help'.
replicated.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=125/n/a
replicated.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
docker[402038]: docker: Error response from daemon: manifest for replicated/replicated-operator:current not found: manifest unknown: manifest unknown.
docker[402038]: See 'docker run --help'.
replicated-operator.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=125/n/a
replicated-operator.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Prerequisites

Cause

This error can occur if the Replicated container images were inadvertently removed from the local Docker image repository during system maintenance, for example, by using commands like docker system prune, docker image prune, or docker rmi.

When Replicated is installed via the Terraform Enterprise install script, its container images are pulled from a remote registry and tagged with current. The systemd units reference these current tags in their docker run commands. If these locally tagged images are missing, Docker cannot start the Replicated containers, causing the services to fail.

Solutions

There are two ways to resolve this issue.

Solution 1: Rerun the Install Script

The most direct method is to run the Terraform Enterprise install script again. This process will restore the required container images and retag them correctly in the local repository.

Solution 2: Manually Retag Local Images

If the version-tagged Replicated images still exist in the local repository but the current tags are missing, you can manually retag them.

  1. Verify that the version-tagged images are present. Run docker image ls and locate the replicated/replicated, replicated/replicated-operator, and replicated/replicated-ui images.

    $ docker image ls
    REPOSITORY                           TAG            IMAGE ID       CREATED        SIZE
    replicated/replicated                stable-2.54.1  3f4f8cf65a77   5 weeks ago    348MB
    replicated/replicated-ui             stable-2.54.1  24cff54683d7   5 weeks ago    138MB
    replicated/replicated-operator       stable-2.54.1  c01aa42bf17b   5 weeks ago    129MB
    ##...
  2. Tag each of the versioned images with the current tag. Replace stable-2.54.1 with the version tag found in your environment.

    Tag the main Replicated image.

    $ docker tag replicated/replicated:stable-2.54.1 replicated/replicated:current

    Tag the Replicated operator image.

    $ docker tag replicated/replicated-operator:stable-2.54.1 replicated/replicated-operator:current

    Tag the Replicated UI image.

    $ docker tag replicated/replicated-ui:stable-2.54.1 replicated/replicated-ui:current

Outcome

After applying one of the solutions, the replicated, replicated-operator, and replicated-ui services should start successfully on the next restart attempt.

Document Location

Worldwide

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Historical Number

13161802587795

Document Information

Modified date:
16 March 2026

UID

ibm17265113