Describe the Bug
Hi there - I’ve been running into issues with background agents today. It is failing during environment setup - and I’ve narrowed it down to the system clock being off by several+ hours on the container – and that causing apt-get commands to fail.
Has anyone ran into this before and/or have any suggested work arounds?
Steps to Reproduce
- Configure your project to use a custom Dockerfile (via .cursor/environment.json)
- Use a stripped down Dockerfile like:
FROM ubuntu:24.04
RUN date
RUN apt-get update -y
Expected Behavior
- Date should return an up to date timestamp (instead its 12+ hours behind)
- Apt-get update should work (not have package list release file “is not valid yet” errors)
- Dockerfile is able to continue with install packages with apt-get thereafter
Screenshots / Screen Recordings
Operating System
Linux
Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)
I’m primarily debugging this on the Web UI for Agents
Additional Information
I’ve been in the process of enabling out Background Agent setup for our projects for the first time - so I can’t speak to whether this is a recent regression or something that has been ongoing.
Additionally I tried different approaches to syncing time - but none of the services or utilities to do this come preinstalled on the minimal container env - and there isn’t permissions to set date time in the container.
Does this stop you from using Cursor
Yes - Cursor is unusable