User <Number> Is Not Registered on REST API calls . . . but bin commands work

[Xopher00]

The problem

$ docker exec -it signal-api signal-cli -a <number> send -m "This is your personal assistant" <receipient>                
$ 1761956806

Messages Goes thru

curl -X POST http://localhost:8003/v2/send -H "Content-Type: application/json" \                                                0:27:14 
  -d '{
        "message":"Hello from API",
        "number":"<number>",
        "recipients":["<receipient>"]
      }'
{"error":"User <number> is not registered.\n"}#     

User reported as not registered

I have spent hours on this and I have gotten nowhere. I do not know where this is coming from. I have tried switchig between native and json-rpc mode. I have tried resetting the contianer and starting from scratch. This does not make sense to me. I cannot integrate this into my project without a functioning rest api.

Are you using the latest released version?

• Yes

Have you read the troubleshooting page?

• Yes

What type of installation are you running?

signal-cli-rest-api Docker Container

In which mode are you using the docker container?

Native Mode

What's the architecture of your host system?

x86-64

Additional information

No response

[bbernhard]

How did you register the number? Via the REST API endpoint or directly via signal-cli?

When you are running the signal-cli command inside the docker container you are not specifying any config directory via --config. So I guess the REST API might be searching at the wrong place for the configuration.

In order to confirm this, please enable the debug mode (see https://github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api/blob/master/doc/DEBUG.md). This logs out the actual signal-cli command which is called when you call the send endpoint.

[Xopher00]

I registered the number via signal-cli. I am trying to create a chat-bot, and the process for passing the capctha test means I could not use the normal Rest API interface means I could not use my existing Signal account to register - its meant to have its own number and account. The signal-cli was the only way to do this. It seems that when I registered an account, the data was stored under /root/.local/share/signal-cli/data. I am not sure why this is. I tried changing the default config directory, I tried copying the data to /home/.local/share/signal-cli/data. However these actions did not seem to work. I will test to confirm if this is actually the cause

[Xopher00]

time="2025-11-01T00:24:22Z" level=info msg="Started Signal Messenger REST API"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 00:25:43 | 400 |   2.68499459s |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v2/send"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 00:26:00 | 400 |  1.154868479s |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v2/send"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 00:27:26 | 400 |  1.774898991s |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v2/send"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 06:06:59 | 404 |        1.47µs |     3.130.96.91 | GET      "/"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 15:53:15 | 204 |   18.782302ms |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v1/configuration"
time="2025-11-01T15:53:50Z" level=error msg="invalid character '\\\\' looking for beginning of object key string"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 15:53:50 | 400 |    3.147729ms |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v2/send"
time="2025-11-01T15:55:30Z" level=debug msg="If you want to run this command manually, run the following steps on your host system:"
time="2025-11-01T15:55:30Z" level=debug msg="*) docker exec -it d3991b7712b1 /bin/bash"
time="2025-11-01T15:55:30Z" level=debug msg="*) su signal-api"
time="2025-11-01T15:55:30Z" level=debug msg="*) echo 'Hello World!' | signal-cli-native --config /home/.local/share/signal-cli -a +17162438920 send --message-from-stdin +<personal numbe> --notify-self"
time="2025-11-01T15:55:31Z" level=debug msg="signal-cli output (stdout): "
time="2025-11-01T15:55:31Z" level=debug msg="signal-cli output (stderr): User +<account number> is not registered.\n"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 15:55:31 | 400 |  1.318658955s |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v2/send"

At this point I realized I had not changed the SIGNAL_CLI_CONFIG_DIR to point to the actual directory where account data was stored. After doing so:

time="2025-11-01T16:02:33Z" level=info msg="Started Signal Messenger REST API"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 16:02:41 | 204 |    3.738534ms |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v1/configuration"
time="2025-11-01T16:02:56Z" level=debug msg="If you want to run this command manually, run the following steps on your host system:"
time="2025-11-01T16:02:56Z" level=debug msg="*) docker exec -it bf514a557766 /bin/bash"
time="2025-11-01T16:02:56Z" level=debug msg="*) su signal-api"
time="2025-11-01T16:02:56Z" level=debug msg="*) echo 'Hello World!' | signal-cli-native --config /root/.local/share/signal-cli/data -a +17162438920 send --message-from-stdin +3580504738348 --notify-self"
time="2025-11-01T16:02:58Z" level=debug msg="signal-cli output (stdout): "
time="2025-11-01T16:02:58Z" level=debug msg="signal-cli output (stderr): Failed to read local accounts list\n"

This is a bit confusing as it seems like signal-cli and the rest-api are running with different permissions. that doe snot really make much sense

[Xopher00]

I went through all the initial steps I listed to set up a new account, except this time, I specified the config with the signal-cli argument -c /home/.local/share/signal-cli. In my compose file I have
- SIGNAL_CLI_CONFIG_DIR=/home/.local/share/signal-cli
This seemed to work at first as I could see the config files being created in the right directory. However, I still get the same exact error:

time="2025-11-01T16:11:56Z" level=info msg="Started Signal Messenger REST API"
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 16:16:22 | 204 |    1.970948ms |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v1/configuration"
time="2025-11-01T16:16:58Z" level=debug msg="If you want to run this command manually, run the following steps on your host system:"
time="2025-11-01T16:16:58Z" level=debug msg="*) docker exec -it 5e0d8b04a571 /bin/bash"
time="2025-11-01T16:16:58Z" level=debug msg="*) su signal-api"
time="2025-11-01T16:16:58Z" level=debug msg="*) echo 'Hello World!' | signal-cli-native --config /home/.local/share/signal-cli -a +******send --message-from-stdin +*****--notify-self"
time="2025-11-01T16:17:00Z" level=debug msg="signal-cli output (stdout): "
[GIN] 2025/11/01 - 16:17:00 | 400 |  1.487964989s |      172.22.0.1 | POST     "/v2/send"
time="2025-11-01T16:17:00Z" level=debug msg="signal-cli output (stderr): Failed to read local accounts list\n"

I don't really know what else to try. As an extra sanity ceck I ran the same test using signal-cli:

# signal-cli -c /home/.local/share/signal-cli -a +****** send -m "I'm looking for a man in finance" +******
INFO  AccountHelper - The Signal protocol expects that incoming messages are regularly received.
WARN  ManagerImpl - No profile name set. When sending a message it's recommended to set a profile name with the updateProfile command. This may become mandatory in the future.
*******

This actually worked. But that does not really help me since I still cannot use the Rest API

[Xopher00]

+ set -e
+ [ -z /home/.local/share/signal-cli/data ]
+ usermod -u 1000 signal-api
usermod: no changes
+ groupmod -o -g 1000 signal-api
Changing ownership of /home/.local/share/signal-cli/data to 1000:1000
+ [ true != false ]
+ echo Changing ownership of /home/.local/share/signal-cli/data to 1000:1000
+ chown 1000:1000 -R /home/.local/share/signal-cli/data

These were the initial docker logs when the container starts. I thought changing these variables would fix the issue:

signal-cli -c /home/.local/share/signal-cli/data
- SIGNAL_CLI_CONFIG_DIR=/home/.local/share/signal-cli/data

This has not worked either

time="2025-11-01T16:35:33Z" level=debug msg="signal-cli output (stderr): Failed to read local accounts list\n"

[Xopher00]

Okay, I used the endpoints from the rest api documentation to register an account, and it works now: https://bbernhard.github.io/signal-cli-rest-api
It would be nice if there was a way to register an account without scanning a QR code with a phone. This should technically be possible, it would just be a little easier with a clean UI

[Asgeirs-com]

Thank you so much, had given up because I basically have had the same hours of issues - but because Copilot/GPT-5 insisted on setting up the signal account via signal-cli inside docker instead of the much easier API method described in the Readme...