docker login error saving credentials: error storing credential The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files

[Gilles-France]

Description

Cannot login to the container registry :

id12345@ubuntu2204 ~ $ docker login docker.artifactory.mycompany.com
Username: id12345
Password:
error saving credentials: error storing credentials - err: exit status 1, out: `The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not provided by any .service files`

Reproduce

1. logout ( docker logout docker.artifactory.mycompany.com)
2. login ( docker login docker.artifactory.mycompany.com)

Expected behavior

1. authentication succeeds
2. the credentials are stored into ~/.docker/config.json

docker version

Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:           29.7.1
 API version:       1.55
 Go version:        go1.26.5
 Git commit:        e9452d6
 Built:             Fri Jul 31 17:07:31 2026
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           default

Server: Docker Engine - Community
 Engine:
  Version:          29.7.1
  API version:      1.55 (minimum version 1.40)
  Go version:       go1.26.5
  Git commit:       c5b8ce9
  Built:            Fri Jul 31 17:07:31 2026
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false
 containerd:
  Version:          v2.2.6
  GitCommit:        11ce9d5f3c68c941867e82890e93e815c1304f1b
 runc:
  Version:          1.3.6
  GitCommit:        v1.3.6-0-g491b69ba
 docker-init:
  Version:          0.19.0
  GitCommit:        de40ad0

docker info

Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:    29.7.1
 Context:    default
 Debug Mode: false
 Plugins:
  buildx: Docker Buildx (Docker Inc.)
    Version:  v0.36.0
    Path:     /usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/docker-buildx
  compose: Docker Compose (Docker Inc.)
    Version:  v5.3.1
    Path:     /usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose

Server:
 Containers: 10
  Running: 10
  Paused: 0
  Stopped: 0
 Images: 12
 Server Version: 29.7.1
 Storage Driver: overlay2
  Backing Filesystem: extfs
  Supports d_type: true
  Using metacopy: false
  Native Overlay Diff: true
  userxattr: false
 Logging Driver: json-file
 Cgroup Driver: systemd
 Cgroup Version: 2
 Plugins:
  Volume: local
  Network: bridge host ipvlan macvlan null overlay
  Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file local splunk syslog
 CDI spec directories:
  /etc/cdi
  /run/cdi
 Discovered Devices:
  cdi: nvidia.com/gpu=all
 Swarm: inactive
 Runtimes: io.containerd.runc.v2 runc
 Default Runtime: runc
 Init Binary: docker-init
 containerd version: 11ce9d5f3c68c941867e82890e93e815c1304f1b
 runc version: v1.3.6-0-g491b69ba
 init version: de40ad0
 Security Options:
  seccomp
   Profile: builtin
  cgroupns
 Kernel Version: 6.18.33.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2
 Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
 OSType: linux
 Architecture: x86_64
 CPUs: 8
 Total Memory: 9.713GiB
 Name: ubuntu2204
 ID: 84dff749-cac8-4593-9f58-d7deffd81138
 Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker
 Debug Mode: false
 Experimental: false
 Insecure Registries:
  127.0.0.0/8
  ::1/128
 Live Restore Enabled: false
 Firewall Backend: iptables
  EnableUserlandProxy: true
  UserlandProxyPath: /usr/bin/docker-proxy

Additional Info

Workaround consists in adding credentials manually (not plain text but BASE64 encoded) :

echo -n 'id12345:YOUR_PASSWORD' | base64 -w0

and

cat > ~/.docker/config.json <<EOF
{
  "auths": {
    "docker.artifactory.mycompany.com": {
      "auth": "BASE64_VALUE"
    },
    "docker-public.artifactory.mycompany.com": {
      "auth": "BASE64_VALUE"
    }
  }
}
EOF

[thaJeztah]

This looks to be related to the credentials-helper that's used the secretservice (docker-credential-secretservice) does not work in a headless setup, and requires a D-Bus connection;

• Secretservice provider relies on D-Bus docker-credential-helpers#105
• docker login requires X11 support moby/moby#38948

As alternative is to use the pass credentials-helpr (docker-credential-pass), which uses pass for storing credentials (but this requires pass to be initialized for use).