Remote access to webserver in docker container - docker

I've started using docker for dev, with the following setup:
Host machine - ubuntu server.
Docker container - webapp w/ tomcat server (using https).
As far as host-container access goes - everything works fine.
However, I can't manage to access the container's webapp from a remote machine (though still within the same network).
When running
docker port <container-id> 443
output is as expected, so docker's port binding seems fine.
172.16.*.*:<random-port>
Any ideas?
Thanks!

I figured out what I missed, so here's a simple flow for accessing docker containers webapps from remote machines:
Step #1 : Bind physical host ports (e.g. 22, 443, 80, ...) to container's virtual ports.
possible syntax:
docker run -p 127.0.0.1:443:3444 -d <docker-image-name>
(see docker docs for port redirection with all options)
Step #2 : Redirect host's physical port to container's allocated virtual port. possible (linux) syntax:
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i <host-interface-device> -p tcp --dport <host-physical-port> -j REDIRECT --to-port <container-virtual-port>
That should cover the basic use case.
Good luck!

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I'm aware docker host creates a private network for it's containers which is inaccessible from the outside. That said your best bet would probably be to access the container at {host_IP}:{mapped_port}.

If your container was built with a Dockerfile that has an EXPOSE statement, e.g. EXPOSE 443, then you can start the container with the -P option (as in "publish" or "public"). The port will be made available to connections from remote machines:
$ docker run -d -P mywebservice
If you didn't use a Dockerfile, or if it didn't have an EXPOSE statement (it should!), then you can also do an explicit port mapping:
$ docker run -d -p 80 mywebservice
In both cases, the result will be a publicly-accessible port:
$ docker ps
9bcb… mywebservice:latest … 0.0.0.0:49153->80/tcp …
Last but not least, you can force the port number if you need to:
$ docker run -d -p 8442:80 mywebservice
In that case, connecting to your Docker host IP address on port 8442 will reach the container.

There are some alternatives of how to access docker containers from an external device (in the same network), check out this post for more information http://blog.nunes.io/2015/05/02/how-to-access-docker-containers-from-external-devices.html

Related

Unable to access jenkins on port 8080 when running docker network host

I have a Jenkins running in a docker container in Linux ec2 instance. I am running testcontainers within it and I want to expose all ports to the host. For that I am using network host.
When I run the jenkins container with -p 8080:8080 everything works fine and I am able to access jenkins on {ec2-ip}:8080
docker run id -p 8080:8080 -p 50000:50000 jenkins/jenkins:lts
however, If I want to run the same image using --network=host as I want to expose all ports to the host
docker run id --network=host jenkins/jenkins:lts
{ec2-ip}:8080 becomes unreachable. I can curl to it locally within the container localhost:8080 but accessing jenkins from the browser doesn't work.
I am not sure how network host would change the way I access jenkins on port 8080. the application should be still available on port 8080 on the host IP address?
Check if you are enabling the port 8080 in the security group for the instance.
When a Docker container is running in the host network mode using the --network=host option, it shares the network stack with the Docker host. This means that the container is not isolated and uses the same network interface as the host.
In your case, you should be able to access the Jenkins from the browser with ec2-ip:8080
I tested it by running Jenkins with the following command:
docker run -id --name jenkins --network=host jenkins/jenkins:lts
if the issue still persists, you can check the following:
make sure the container is running
make sure that there is no other process is running on port 8080
make sure that you enabled the port 8080 for your ec2
AFAIU --network doesn't do what you expect it to do. --network flag allows you to connect the container to a network. For example, when you do --nerwork=host your container will be able to use the Docker host network stack. Not the other way around. Take a look at the official documentation.
Figured it out. needed to update iptables to allow port 8080 on network host.
sudo iptables -D INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 8080 -m comment --comment "# jenkins #" -j ACCEPT

Why is it possible to connect to the redis docker container without port forwarding?

When I run: docker run --rm -it redis, The container receives ip: 172.18.0.2. Then from the host I connect to the container with the following command: redis-cli -h 172.18.0.2, and it connects normally, everything works, the keys are added. Why does this happen without port forwarding? Default docker network - bridge
docker run --rm -it redis will not expose the port. Try stop the redis container. Then run redis-cli -h 172.18.0.2 to check if another redis exists.
It is only possible because you're on native Linux, and the way Docker networking is implemented, it happens to be possible to directly connect to the container-private IP addresses from outside Docker.
This doesn't work in a wide variety of common situations (on MacOS or Windows hosts; if Docker is actually running in a VM; if you're making the call from a different host) and the IP address you get can change if the container is recreated. As such it's not usually a best practice to look up the container-private IP address. Use docker run -p to publish a port, and connect to that published port and the host's IP address.
It's because the redis docker file exposes the right port for the api which is 6379.

Docker port exposed to outside world

I've installed docker in a VM which is publicy available on internet. I've installed mongodb in a docker container in the VM.Mongodb is listening on 27017 port.
I've installed using the following steps
docker run -p 27017:27017 --name da-mongo -v ~/mongo-data:/data/db -d mongo
The port from container is redirected to the host using the -p flag. But the port 27017 is exposed on the internet. I don't want it to happen.
Is there any way to fix it?
Well, if you want it available for certain hosts then you need a firewall. But, if all you need is it working on localhost (your VM machine), then you don't need to expose/bind the port with the host. I suggest you to run the container without the -p option, then, run the following command:
docker inspect -f '{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' your_container_id_or_name
After that, it will display an IP, it is the IP of the container you've just ran (Yes, docker uses somewhat an internal virtual network connecting your containers and your host machine between them).
After that, you can connect to it using the IP and port combination, something like:
172.17.0.2:27017
When you publish the port, you can select which host interface to publish on:
docker run -p 127.0.0.1:27017:27017 --name da-mongo \
-v ~/mongo-data:/data/db -d mongo
That will publish the container port 27017 to host interface 127.0.0.1 port 27017. You can only add the interface to the host port, the container itself must still bind to 0.0.0.0.

How can I redirect a single port in a docker container to the container's host?

To make development easier for a project, I've put a couple of services it depends on in docker containers. This makes 'localhost' in the project's config mean something different when it is passed to one of the containers.
edit
To be clear, I'm trying to forward one of the container's ports to the host so when a process running in the container tries to access localhost:5432, it connects to the host's port 5432.
endedit
I'm currently using
HOST_IP=`ip route | grep default | awk '{ printf "%s",$3 }'`
cat /etc/hosts | sed "s/127.0.0.1/$HOST_IP/" > /tmp/etc_hosts
cp /tmp/etc_hosts /etc/hosts
to redirect anything targeting 'localhost' to the container's host. It works in this situation, but I'd prefer to find a way to do this only for the needed port as I expect it won't work in other situations.
Here's what I came up with to do that, but it's not working; when a connection in the container is to localhost:5432, it tries to connect to the container's 5432 instead of the host's:
# --- These are the things that should make redirecting port 5432 to the host machine
# work, provided the container is run in privileged mode.
sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.route_localnet=1
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 5432 -j DNAT --to 172.19.0.1:5432
iptables -A FORWARD -d 172.19.0.1 -p tcp --dport 5432 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j MASQUERADE
If I understand well, for development, you'd want localhost to resolve to a specific container, including when it's called from another container.
Host forwarding
Rewriting your hosts file is, as you mentioned it, not a good idea, since many services can experiment issues if you design localhost as being something different than, well... your local host.
But you can consider a few solutions.
Docker Toolbox
If running docker with Docker Toolbox, or by yourself on a virtual machine with Virtual Box, the intermediate virtual machine is visible, so localhost will represent it. You'll have to run the container, exposing this port, and then to set up a port forwarding in Virtualbox. If I use Wordpress as an example:
docker run -p 80:80 --name website -d wordpress
Virtual Box -> your docker VM (usually called default) -> Network -> Adapter 1 -> port forwarding -> create a mapping from host 8080 to guest 80
It will make Wordpress available at http://localhost:8080. Please note that under MacOS, the kernel restrains non-privileged port forwarding (ports under 1024).
This port forwarding can be created in command line, if you want to put it in a script:
VBoxManage modifyvm "default" --natpf1 "app,tcp,,8080,,80"
Docker for Windows/Docker for Mac
If running docker through Docker for Windows/Docker for Mac (or directly under Linux), rather than Docker Toolbox, you can run the container using the -p parameter, as specified by Scott's post, and your service will be available on localhost at this port (because the intermediate virtual machine is transparent, or no VM under Linux):
docker run -p 5432:5432 --name myapp -d myimage will make myapp available at localhost:5432.
socat (or iptables)
You can run socat on your host this way to forward communication on a specific port to your container:
socat TCP-LISTEN:5432,fork,reuseaddr,user=node,group=node,mode=777 TCP:172.19.0.1:5432 &
(where 172.19.0.1 is your container IP)
Container forwarding
--network
Your containers have their own hosts file, that you can see by issuing such a command:
docker run ubuntu cat /etc/hosts
You can add entries to hosts with the --add-host parameter:
docker run --add-host domain:1.2.3.4 --add-host domain2:5.6.7.8 ubuntu cat /etc/hosts
However this solution will be useless for localhost, because it won't remove the previous localhost associations. What you're looking for (and what is cleaner) is the parameter --network=host which allows the container to share the network interfaces of the host:
docker run --network=host ubuntu
This way, your container will be able to call the other containers services on localhost using their port.
The right way
Of course, the right way to achieve what you want would be to link your containers together and use their link names rather than localhost.
docker run -d --name mariadb -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password mariadb
docker run -d --name="wordpress" -p 8080:80 -e WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=password --link mariadb:mysql wordpress
In this case, the Wordpress container will have a mysql entry in its hosts file, pointing to the mariadb container IP address. To see it, open a bash session in the Wordpress container and see by yourself.
docker exec -ti wordpress bash
#cat /etc/hosts
Show us how you are launching your container
port mapping can happen in your docker run command : -p hostport:containerport
as in
docker run -p 5432:5432 --name mycontainer -d myimage

How can I run a docker container on localhost over the default IP?

I'm following the following tutorial on how to start a basic nginx server in a docker container. However, the example's nginx docker container runs on localhost (0.0.0.0) as shown here:
Meanwhile, when I run it it for some reason it runs on the IP 10.0.75.2:
Is there any particular reason why this is happening? And is there any way to get it to run on localhost like in the example?
Edit: I tried using --net=host but had no results:
The default network is bridged. The 0.0.0.0:49166->443 shows a port mapping of exposed ports in the container to high level ports on your host because of the -P option. You can manually map specific ports by changing that flag to something like -p 8080:80 -p 443:443 to have port 8080 and 443 on your host map into the container.
You can also change the default network to be your host network as you've requested. This removes some of the isolation and protections provided by the container, and limits your ability to configure integrations between containers, which is why it is not the default option. That syntax would be:
docker run --name nginx1 --net=host -d nginx
Edit: from your comments and a reread I see you're also asking about where the 10.0.75.2 ip address comes from. This is based on how you launch the docker daemon. That IP binding is assigned when you pass the --ip flag to the daemon documentation here. If you're running docker in a vm with docker-machine, I'd expect this to be the IP of your vm.
A good turnaround is to set using -p flag (--publish short)
docker run -d -p 3000:80 --name <your_image_name> nginx:<version_tag>

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