this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Do you guys expose the docker socket to any of your containers or is that a strict no-no? What are your thoughts behind it if you don't? How do you justify this decision from a security standpoint if you do?

I am still fairly new to docker but I like the idea of something like Watchtower. Even though I am not a fan of auto-updates and I probably wouldn't use that feature I still find it interesting to get a notification if some container needs an update. However, it needs to have access to the docker socket to do its work and I read a lot about that and that this is a bad idea which can result in root access on your host filesystem from within a container.

There are probably other containers as well especially in this whole monitoring and maintenance category, that need that privilege, so I wanted to ask how other people handle this situation.

Cheers!

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[–] gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I use Podman with Diun (like Watchtower but no auto-updates) and I think that's the only time I've had to mount the socket into the container. Maybe also CrowdSec. Podman is rootless so I feel a bit better about it.

[–] 5ymm3trY@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago

I don't know anything about Podman but I think Docker also has a rootless mode, however I don't really know any details about that either. Maybe I should read more about that.

Yeah, I think I also saw some fancy dashboard with Grafana and Prometheus where some part also required access to the socket (can't remember which), so I thought it might me more common to do that than I originally thought.