Permission Denied while installing Airflow via Docker - linux

Question

https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/stable/start/docker.html
I am following the above installation guide. At the step where it says:
echo -e "AIRFLOW_UID=$(id -u)\nAIRFLOW_GID=0" > .env
I think it's supposed to create a .env file, but it isn't creating anything for me. If i use the ls command .env doesn't show up.
If i try to move on to the next step:
docker-compose up airflow-init
I get the following error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 677, in urlopen
File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 392, in _make_request
File "http/client.py", line 1277, in request
File "http/client.py", line 1323, in _send_request
File "http/client.py", line 1272, in endheaders
File "http/client.py", line 1032, in _send_output
File "http/client.py", line 972, in send
File "docker/transport/unixconn.py", line 43, in connect
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "requests/adapters.py", line 449, in send
File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 727, in urlopen
File "urllib3/util/retry.py", line 410, in increment
File "urllib3/packages/six.py", line 734, in reraise
File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 677, in urlopen
File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 392, in _make_request
File "http/client.py", line 1277, in request
File "http/client.py", line 1323, in _send_request
File "http/client.py", line 1272, in endheaders
File "http/client.py", line 1032, in _send_output
File "http/client.py", line 972, in send
File "docker/transport/unixconn.py", line 43, in connect
urllib3.exceptions.ProtocolError: ('Connection aborted.', PermissionError(13, 'Permission denied'))
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "docker/api/client.py", line 214, in _retrieve_server_version
File "docker/api/daemon.py", line 181, in version
File "docker/utils/decorators.py", line 46, in inner
File "docker/api/client.py", line 237, in _get
File "requests/sessions.py", line 543, in get
File "requests/sessions.py", line 530, in request
File "requests/sessions.py", line 643, in send
File "requests/adapters.py", line 498, in send
requests.exceptions.ConnectionError: ('Connection aborted.', PermissionError(13, 'Permission denied'))
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "docker-compose", line 3, in <module>
File "compose/cli/main.py", line 81, in main
File "compose/cli/main.py", line 199, in perform_command
File "compose/cli/command.py", line 70, in project_from_options
File "compose/cli/command.py", line 153, in get_project
File "compose/cli/docker_client.py", line 43, in get_client
File "compose/cli/docker_client.py", line 170, in docker_client
File "docker/api/client.py", line 197, in __init__
File "docker/api/client.py", line 222, in _retrieve_server_version
docker.errors.DockerException: Error while fetching server API version: ('Connection aborted.', PermissionError(13, 'Permission denied'))
[22636] Failed to execute script docker-compose
I am using Ubuntu 20.04 on an AWS EC2 instance.

Answer 1

Regarding the .env file, it might not be visible with just the ls command, but probably is there. Try to execute ls -a to also show hidden files. Files starting with . are hidden by default.
I think your second issue is a permission issue with docker-compose. Try running sudo docker-compose up airflow-init instead, or add your user to the docker group.