How to kill networking to a docker container? - docker

What approach can I use to kill networking to a docker container (ie: make it unreachable from the host OS)? A typical approach for a non-container would be to alter iptables, but for Docker I'm not sure how to go about this.

It's mostly this way by default. If you don't expose any ports and don't run network services in the OS (usually you just run your application), there's nothing to reach in the container.
You might clarify precisely what you mean with "reachable". Reachable from where for what purpose? If you don't expose any ports, your container is not reachable from any other host. Your container may still be "reachable" from other containers within the docker network on the host, so if your concern is other docker containers within the same docker host, docker provides the --icc=false flag to disable inter-container communication, which by default is enabled. More info here in the docs.

Related

Issues with Docker networking on a GCP instance

I'm trying to build and run a simple Docker container (using docker-compose to do this) on a GCP Instance (Ubuntu 20.04), and it seems that the container cannot access the internet, unless I run it using
docker run --net=host [...]
or use in my docker-compose.yml something like:
service:
build:
...
network: host
network_mode: host
...
I'm wondering why it is so, that a simple docker container on a standard GCP instance with Ubuntu 20.04 should require some specific configuration to access Internet, and why I see almost no mention of this while searching for this issue on the web.
Am I doing something wrong, is there a better way to do this?
See Container networking for Docker and the principle is applied consistently across other container runtimes too.
Using --net=host or network_mode: host binds container(s) to the host's network.
Rather than broadly publishing all of a container's or service's ports to the host network (and thus making them host public), you can be more precise using --publish=[HOST-PORT]:[CONTAINER-PORT] or ports to expose container ports as host ports (and potentially remap these too).
One (of several advantages) to the not-published-by-default behavior is that you must take a second step to publish a container's ports to a host where there is increased possibility that the service may be accessed (via its ports) by undesired actors.

Why does Docker prevent attaching a container to both host and user defined bridge network?

Why is it that Docker prohibits attaching a container to both the host and user defined bridge network?
Secondly, for deployments that require disabling IP forwarding on the host machine does docker recommend deploying docker containers with host networking only, since based on what i understand that seems to be the only option left.
Any insights on the above two?
Thanks
Why is it that Docker prohibits attaching a container to both the host and user defined bridge network?
Because there's no way to "attach" networks when a container is running in the host network namespace.
Docker attaches networks by adding virtual interfaces to a container's isolated network namespace. When running in the global network namespace, there's no sane way to do this: any new interfaces wouldn't be restricted to the container, and would potentially disrupt host networking.
Secondly, for deployments that require disabling IP forwarding on the host machine does docker recommend deploying docker containers with host networking only, since based on what i understand that seems to be the only option left.
That's probably the only easy option.
You could run a proxy service on the host that would expose services in Docker containers. You could potentially even automate that by monitoring the Docker for events and getting information about published ports. Otherwise you would need to manually implement the appropriate configuration.

How to expose the docker container ip to the external network?

i want to expose the container ip to the external network where the host is running so that i can directly ping the docker container ip from an external machine.
If i ping the docker container ip from the external machine where the machine hosting the docker and the machine from which i am pinging are in the same network i need to get the response from these machines
Pinging the container's IP (i.e. the IP it shows when you look at docker inspect [CONTAINER]) from another machine does not work. However, the container is reachable via the public IP of its host.
In addition to Borja's answer, you can expose the ports of Docker containers by adding -p [HOST_PORT]:[CONTAINER_PORT] to your docker run command.
E.g. if you want to reach a web server in a Docker container from another machine, you can start it with docker run -d -p 80:80 httpd:alpine. The container's port 80 is then reachable via the host's port 80. Other machines on the same network will then also be able to reach the webserver in this container (depending on Firewall settings etc. of course...)
Since you tagged this as kubernetes:
You cannot directly send packets to individual Docker containers. You need to send them to somewhere else that’s able to route them. In the case of plain Docker, you need to use the docker run -p option to publish a port to the host, and then containers will be reachable via the published port via the host’s IP address or DNS name. In a Kubernetes context, you need to set up a Service that’s able to route traffic to the Pod (or Pods) that are running your container, and you ultimately reach containers via that Service.
The container-internal IP addresses are essentially useless in many contexts. (They cannot be reached from off-host at all; in some environments you can’t even reach them from outside of Docker on the same host.) There are other mechanisms you can use to reach containers (docker run -p from outside Docker, inter-container DNS from within Docker) and you never need to look up these IP addresses at all.
Your question places a heavy emphasis on ping(1). This is a very-low-level debugging tool that uses a network protocol called ICMP. If sending packets using ICMP is actually core to your workflow, you will have difficulty running it in Docker or Kubernetes. I suspect you aren’t actually. Don’t worry so much about being able to directly ping containers; use higher-level tools like curl(1) if you need to verify that a request is reaching its container.
It's pretty easy actually, assuming you have control over the routing tables of your external devices (either directly, or via your LAN's gateway/router). Assuming your containers are using a bridge network of 172.17.0.0/16, you add a static entry for the 172.17.0.0/16 network, with your Docker physical LAN IP as the gateway. You might need to also allow this forwarding in your Docker OS firewall configuration.
After that, you should be able to connect to your docker container using its bridge address (172.17.0.2 for example). Note however that it will likely not respond to pings, due to the container's firewall.
If you're content to access your container using only the bridge IP (and never again use your Docker host IP with the mapped-port), you can remove port mapping from the container entirely.
You need to create a new bridge docker network and attach the container to this network. You should be able to connect by this way.
docker network create -d bridge my-new-bridge-network
or
docker network create --driver=bridge --subnet=192.168.0.0/16 my-new-bridge-network
connect:
docker network connect my-new-bridge-network container1
or
docker network connect --ip 192.168.0.10/16 my-new-bridge-network container-name
If the problem persist, just reload docker daemon, restart the service. Is a known issue.

can the same docker port be used for two different applications?

If we have two applications app1.py and app2.py both running in docker container as flask services with following commands:
docker run -p 5000:5002 app1.py
docker run -p 9000:5002 app2.py
Is it possible to keep the same docker port 5002 for both containers?
Secondly, if I use app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=5000, debug=True) in flask endpoint.py file which is used for image building, is port=5000 the docker port in container or the port available externally on host?
Yes, each container runs in an isolated network namespace, so every one can listen on the same port and they won’t conflict. Inside your application code the port you listen on is the container-internal port, and unless you get told in some other way (like an HTTP Host: header) you have no way of knowing what ports you’ve been remapped to externally.
Is it possible to keep the same docker port 5002 for both containers?
Yes, of course. Typically every container runs in an isolate network namespace, which means containers cannot communicate with each unless they are configured to do so. What confuses you maybe that containers do communicate with each other well by default, which should thank Docker network default setting. But there are still other use cases. You may see more about The container Network Model and network namespace here.
Is port=5000 the port in container or the port valid externally on host?
It’s the port in container with no doubt. We could notice it is a user-defined argument for function run() in Flask. Since Flask application runs in container, so 5000 will be the port which Flask app would listen on in container.
We should map it out if we wanna access 5000 on host(outside of container). The flag -p would help you.
Hope this helps~

How to access applications running in a docker containers inside docker?

I am having a weird scenario in my project.
I am running "Supervisor" application in one of docker container.
Using this supervisor I am running two "web applications" in docker containers and both are using one micro service; again installed in another docker container.
Now, I can able to access my application from "Supervisor's container". But obviously it is not accessible from my machine.
How can I able to access my applications "Web App1" or "Web App2" from my machine?
I have less knowledge related to docker networking.
Please help.
You can map ports of Web App1 and Web App2 to the host container and using the IP address and port you can access those containers from you machine. A better way to do this is to add hostname for your containers and maps ports so you don't have to remember the IP addresses since they are generated randomly on every time the container is recreated.
Docker manages network traffic between "host machine" and containers. In this case you have many dockers on different layers. On each layer you have to expose the ports of the internal containers to the "docker host" on the next layer and so on.
This is a solution over ports:
So the "Supervisor" on 172.17.42.1 must expose the ports of all the internal containers (172.17.0.2-4) as its own ports. So for "Supervisor" you need a -p docker parameter for each port of all containers inside the "Supervisor".
Expose the network:
Configure the local machine to send any network packet 172.17.*.* to 172.17.42.1. Then configure 172.17.42.1 to send network packages for IPs 172.17.0.* to its network adapter Docker0 (default docker network adapter). The exact implementation is dependent on your distribution.
Another solution:
Skip your Supervisor container and use docker-compose to arrange and manage your internal containers.

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