supabase start fails since v2.112.0: realtime container exits with 'sudo: account validation failure' for the nobody account

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Since Sep 4, 2026.

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Description

bug supabase/cli
Describe the bug

Starting with CLI v2.112.0, supabase start fails deterministically in our containerised CI runners while initialising the schema. The realtime container exits because sudo cannot switch to the nobody account:

Starting database...
Initialising schema...
+ export ERL_CRASH_DUMP=/tmp/erl_crash.dump
+ echo 'Running migrations'
+ sudo -E -u nobody /app/bin/migrate
sudo: account validation failure, is your account locked?
sudo: a password is required
Stopping containers...
error running container: exit 1

Without --debug the only output is error running container: exit 1, which is why this took a while to pin down — it is indistinguishable from unrelated container failures.

To Reproduce

In a Linux container with Docker available and a project with local migrations:

supabase stop --no-backup
supabase start        # fails at "Initialising schema"
Bisection

We bisected across stable releases on a single machine, 3 supabase start attempts per version, same project, same host, same Docker:

CLI version supabase start
2.116.0 0/3
2.115.0 0/3
2.114.0 0/3
2.113.0 0/3
2.112.0 0/3
2.111.0 3/3 OK
2.109.1 6/6 OK

The regression is introduced in 2.112.0 and is still present in 2.116.0. All five failing versions produce the identical sudo: account validation failure message, so this looks like a change in the bundled realtime image rather than in the CLI binary itself.

Expected behavior

supabase start completes, or at minimum surfaces the underlying container error without requiring --debug.

System information
  • OS: Ubuntu (Linux kernel 7.0.0-30-generic), x86_64
  • Docker: 29.1.3 (client and server), storage driver overlayfs, cgroup driver systemd v2
  • Supabase CLI: installed from the official .deb release artifacts
  • Postgres image pulled by 2.116.0: public.ecr.aws/supabase/postgres:17.6.1.165
  • Runs as a non-root user inside an unprivileged system container
Additional context

We have pinned to 2.111.0 as a workaround. Happy to provide more of the --debug output or test a patched image if that helps.

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