docker/cli · error

--health-retries cannot be negative

Error message

--health-retries cannot be negative

What it means

--health-retries sets how many consecutive probe failures mark the container unhealthy; the CLI rejects negative values before constructing the HealthConfig (opts.go:584-586). 0 means 'use the daemon default', so only values >= 0 are meaningful.

Source

Thrown at cli/command/container/opts.go:585

		copts.healthStartInterval != 0
	if copts.noHealthcheck {
		if haveHealthSettings {
			return nil, errors.New("--no-healthcheck conflicts with --health-* options")
		}
		healthConfig = &container.HealthConfig{Test: []string{"NONE"}}
	} else if haveHealthSettings {
		var probe []string
		if copts.healthCmd != "" {
			probe = []string{"CMD-SHELL", copts.healthCmd}
		}
		if copts.healthInterval < 0 {
			return nil, errors.New("--health-interval cannot be negative")
		}
		if copts.healthTimeout < 0 {
			return nil, errors.New("--health-timeout cannot be negative")
		}
		if copts.healthRetries < 0 {
			return nil, errors.New("--health-retries cannot be negative")
		}
		if copts.healthStartPeriod < 0 {
			return nil, errors.New("--health-start-period cannot be negative")
		}
		if copts.healthStartInterval < 0 {
			return nil, errors.New("--health-start-interval cannot be negative")
		}

		healthConfig = &container.HealthConfig{
			Test:          probe,
			Interval:      copts.healthInterval,
			Timeout:       copts.healthTimeout,
			StartPeriod:   copts.healthStartPeriod,
			StartInterval: copts.healthStartInterval,
			Retries:       copts.healthRetries,
		}
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to e9452d6e78)

Solutions

1. Set a non-negative retry count, e.g. --health-retries=3
2. Omit the flag (or 0) for the default retry count
3. For effectively-infinite tolerance, use a large positive number rather than a negative sentinel

Example fix

# before
docker run --health-cmd 'curl -f localhost' --health-retries=-1 myimage
# after
docker run --health-cmd 'curl -f localhost' --health-retries=5 myimage

When it happens

Trigger: `docker run --health-cmd '...' --health-retries=-1 image` on run/create, or any negative integer reaching the flag via script variable expansion.

Common situations: Using -1 hoping for 'retry forever'; off-by-one arithmetic in deployment scripts; copying sentinel conventions from other tools.

Related errors

• --health-interval cannot be negative
• --health-timeout cannot be negative
• --health-start-period cannot be negative
• --health-start-interval cannot be negative
• --pid: invalid PID mode

AI-assisted analysis of docker/cli@e9452d6e78 (2026-08-01). Data as JSON: /data/errors/d4e5c6ee59cd4b5a.json. Report an issue: GitHub.