Cannot Reopen in Dev Container

[Q_Just]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When trying to reopen Cursor in a previously functioning Dev Container, it never finishes loading. The Terminal says Container started, but the status in the bottom left says “Opening Remote…” and “Setting up Dev Container (details): Starting Dev Container…”

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open a project workspace with a Dev Container set up
2. Click “Reopen in Container”

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

Linux

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.0.77
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: ba90f2f88e4911312761abab9492c42442117cf0
Date: 2025-11-13T23:10:43.113Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.14.0-35-generic

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

[Q_Just]

I forgot to mention that this happened after updating (via the apt repo, if that matters). This makes me suspect it may be version related.

[NicoJorgensen1 (Nicolai Jørgensen)]

I am running the same version of cursor on my windows machine ssh’ed into a remote ubuntu server. This has been my working environment and routine for the past few years, and I have never had issues with cursor and my devcontainers, before today as well.

I have the same cursor version:

Version: 2.0.77 (system setup)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: ba90f2f88e4911312761abab9492c42442117cf0
Date: 2025-11-13T23:10:43.113Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

And gets the error of the attached screenshot when trying to build a devcontainer. So I also assume this must be a cursor related issue.

And yes - docker is installed, docker is running. The “socket closed without exit code” also only comes when I try and open the devcontainer. I can do stuff on the remote machine without using the devcontainer. But as soon as I start trying to build the devcontainer, this error comes…

[Emilio_Soca_Herrera]

Same issue:

Version: 2.1.19
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 39a966b4048ef6b8024b27d4812a50d88de29cc0
Date: 2025-11-21T22:59:02.376Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.0.0

What’s the recommendation to have this working again ?

[Emilio_Soca_Herrera]

I found a temporal workaround..

1. Manually attach from terminal

DEVCONTAINER_DEBUG_MODE=1 devcontainer up --workspace-folder /Users/soca/data/invotracker --log-level trace

2. then in Cursor use Dev Containers:

Attach to Running Container… → invotracker_devcontainer-dev-1

Open Folder → /invotracker

[Blacky (Christian Schwarzbauer)]

same issue here, tried it with multiple versions:

Version: 2.1.19
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 39a966b4048ef6b8024b27d4812a50d88de29cc0
Date: 2025-11-21T22:59:02.376Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.17.1-300.fc43.x86_64

Version: 2.0.77
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: ba90f2f88e4911312761abab9492c42442117cf0
Date: 2025-11-13T23:10:43.113Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.17.1-300.fc43.x86_64

and also the latest 1.7.54.
all of them installed as AppImages.

I’ve tried also a minimal Dev Container as follows:

{
“name”: “My Project”,
“image”: " Microsoft Artifact Registry ",
“workspaceFolder”: “/workspaces/myproject”,
“postCreateCommand”: “”
}

however, even with this, opening in Dev Container always ends up in “Opening Remote…” and “Setting up Dev Container: Starting Dev Container…”, which never finishes.

to me it looks like it’s related to the Dev Containers extension, as the behaviour is so consistent across Cursor versions.

please let us know how you’re intending to address this.

[Q_Just]

I reproduced the error in the following way:

1. create a new working directory
2. open the working directory in VS Code
3. run “Add Dev Container Configuration Files” from the command palette
4. select Microsoft’s Ubuntu container with all defaults
5. open the working directory in Cursor
6. run “Open Folder in Container” from command palette

However, I also discovered a workaround. The above works fine if one uses Podman instead of Docker. Install Podman, then in the Dev Containers extension settings change “Docker Path” to “podman”.

[Galia (Esteban Galiano)]

This is happening to me too and it is tremendously inconvenient. Yes, I can attach to containers started with the devcontainers/cli but that misses half the features of the IDE such as running pytest or having other extensions pre-installed from the devcontainer.json file

[Lucas_Viana_Bissonho]

I have the same issue. I tried other versions of Cursor IDE and Dev Containers and got the same issue. Sometimes when i moved the source code to another directory and change the “name” property in devcontainer.json file, it worked. I hope you guys can fix this soon.

[ravirahman]

Hi all, thank you for this bug report. Could you try upgrading to version 1.0.28 of the Anysphere Remote Containers extension? This version includes a newer version of the devcontainers CLI which should fix this issue.

[Galia (Esteban Galiano)]

the fix worked to me, thanks for the diligence

[Lucas_Viana_Bissonho]

it worked!!! Thank you guys!!!

[Blacky (Christian Schwarzbauer)]

1.0.28 fixed it, thanks!!