Why Docker Breaks Inside MicroVMs (Part 1): The Linux Assumptions You Didn’t Know You Were Relying On

We tried running Docker inside a microVM. It failed before the first container even started. The error wasn’t helpful: cgroup mountpoint does not exist On a normal EC2 instance, Docker just works. Same binary, same commands. Here, it couldn’t even initialize. This wasn’t a Docker issue. It wasn’t a kernel bug either. It was something more subtle: we were relying on parts of Linux that weren’t there anymore . The part nobody thinks about On a normal Linux system, you don’t start from zero. By the