From inside of a Docker container, how do I connec

Question

So I have a Nginx running inside a docker container, I have a mysql running on localhost, I want to connect to the MySql from within my Nginx. The MySql is running on localhost and not exposing a port to the outside world, so its bound on localhost, not bound on the ip address of the machine.

Is there any way to connect to this MySql or any other program on localhost from within this docker container?

Answer 1

I disagree with the answer from Thomasleveil.

Making mysql bind to 172.17.42.1 will prevent other programs using the database on the host to reach it. This will only work if all your database users are dockerized.

Making mysql bind to 0.0.0.0 will open the db to outside world, which is not only a very bad thing to do, but also contrary to what the original question author wants to do. He explicitly says "The MySql is running on localhost and not exposing a port to the outside world, so its bound on localhost"

To answer the comment from ivant

"Why not bind mysql to docker0 as well?"

This is not possible. The mysql/mariadb documentation explicitly says it is not possible to bind to several interfaces. You can only bind to 0, 1, or all interfaces.

As a conclusion, I have NOT found any way to reach the (localhost only) database on the host from a docker container. That definitely seems like a very very common pattern, but I don't know how to do it.

Answer 2

until host.docker.internal is working for every platform you can use my container acting as a NAT gateway without any manually setup https://github.com/qoomon/docker-host

Answer 3

Edit: If you are using Docker-for-mac or Docker-for-Windows 18.03+, just connect to your mysql service using the host host.docker.internal.

As of Docker 18.04, this does not work on Docker-for-Linux. However, using a container as described in qoomon's answer you can get it to work.

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TLDR

Use --network="host" in your docker run command, then 127.0.0.1 in your docker container will point to your docker host.

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Note on docker container networking modes

Docker offers different networking modes when running containers. Depending on the mode you choose you would connect to your MySQL database running on the docker host differently.

docker run --network="bridge" (default)

Docker creates a bridge named docker0 by default. Both the docker host and the docker containers have an IP address on that bridge.

on the Docker host, type sudo ip addr show docker0 you will have an output looking like:

[vagrant@docker:~] $ sudo ip addr show docker0
4: docker0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default
    link/ether 56:84:7a:fe:97:99 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 172.17.42.1/16 scope global docker0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::5484:7aff:fefe:9799/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

So here my docker host has the IP address 172.17.42.1 on the docker0 network interface.

Now start a new container and get a shell on it: docker run --rm -it ubuntu:trusty bash and within the container type ip addr show eth0 to discover how its main network interface is set up:

root@e77f6a1b3740:/# ip addr show eth0
863: eth0: <BROADCAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 66:32:13:f0:f1:e3 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 172.17.1.192/16 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::6432:13ff:fef0:f1e3/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Here my container has the IP address 172.17.1.192. Now look at the routing table:

root@e77f6a1b3740:/# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
default         172.17.42.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0
172.17.0.0      *               255.255.0.0     U     0      0        0 eth0

So the IP Address of the docker host 172.17.42.1 is set as the default route and is accessible from your container.

root@e77f6a1b3740:/# ping 172.17.42.1
PING 172.17.42.1 (172.17.42.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 172.17.42.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.070 ms
64 bytes from 172.17.42.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.201 ms
64 bytes from 172.17.42.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.116 ms

docker run --network="host"

Alternatively you can run a docker container with network settings set to host. Such a container will share the network stack with the docker host and from the container point of view, localhost (or 127.0.0.1) will refer to the docker host.

Be aware that any port opened in your docker container would be opened on the docker host. And this without requiring the -p or -P docker run option.

IP config on my docker host:

[vagrant@docker:~] $ ip addr show eth0
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:98:dc:aa brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 10.0.2.15/24 brd 10.0.2.255 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fe98:dcaa/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

and from a docker container in host mode:

[vagrant@docker:~] $ docker run --rm -it --network=host ubuntu:trusty ip addr show eth0
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:98:dc:aa brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 10.0.2.15/24 brd 10.0.2.255 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fe98:dcaa/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

As you can see both the docker host and docker container share the exact same network interface and as such have the same IP address.

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Connecting to MySQL from containers

bridge mode

To access MySQL running on the docker host from containers in bridge mode, you need to make sure the MySQL service is listening for connections on the 172.17.42.1 IP address.

To do so, make sure you have either bind-address = 172.17.42.1 or bind-address = 0.0.0.0 in your MySQL config file (my.cnf).

If you need to set an environment variable with the IP address of the gateway, you can run the following code in a container :

export DOCKER_HOST_IP=$(route -n | awk '/UG[ \t]/{print $2}')

then in your application, use the DOCKER_HOST_IP environment variable to open the connection to MySQL.

Note: if you use bind-address = 0.0.0.0 your MySQL server will listen for connections on all network interfaces. That means your MySQL server could be reached from the Internet ; make sure to setup firewall rules accordingly.

Note 2: if you use bind-address = 172.17.42.1 your MySQL server won't listen for connections made to 127.0.0.1. Processes running on the docker host that would want to connect to MySQL would have to use the 172.17.42.1 IP address.

host mode

To access MySQL running on the docker host from containers in host mode, you can keep bind-address = 127.0.0.1 in your MySQL configuration and all you need to do is to connect to 127.0.0.1 from your containers:

[vagrant@docker:~] $ docker run --rm -it --network=host mysql mysql -h 127.0.0.1 -uroot -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 36
Server version: 5.5.41-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql>

note: Do use mysql -h 127.0.0.1 and not mysql -h localhost; otherwise the MySQL client would try to connect using a unix socket.

Answer 4

Solution for Linux (kernel >=3.6).

Ok, your localhost server has default docker interface docker0 with ip address 172.17.0.1. Your container started with default network settings --net="bridge".

1. Enable route_localnet for docker0 interface:
   $ sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.docker0.route_localnet=1
2. Add this rules to iptables:
   $ iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -i docker0 -d 172.17.0.1 -p tcp --dport 3306 -j DNAT --to 127.0.0.1:3306
$ iptables -t filter -I INPUT -i docker0 -d 127.0.0.1 -p tcp --dport 3306 -j ACCEPT
3. Create mysql user with access from '%' that mean - from anyone, excluding localhost:
   CREATE USER 'user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
4. Change in your script the mysql-server address to 172.17.0.1

From the kernel documentation:

route_localnet - BOOLEAN: Do not consider loopback addresses as martian source or destination while routing. This enables the use of 127/8 for local routing purposes (default FALSE).

Answer 5

None of the answers worked for me when using Docker Toolbox on Windows 10 Home, but 10.0.2.2 did, since it uses VirtualBox which exposes the host to the VM on this address.

Answer 6

This worked for me on an NGINX/PHP-FPM stack without touching any code or networking where the app's just expecting to be able to connect to localhost

Mount mysqld.sock from the host to inside the container.

Find the location of the mysql.sock file on the host running mysql:
netstat -ln | awk '/mysql(.*)?\.sock/ { print $9 }'

Mount that file to where it's expected in the docker:
docker run -v /hostpath/to/mysqld.sock:/containerpath/to/mysqld.sock

Possible locations of mysqld.sock:

/tmp/mysqld.sock
/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock 
/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock # if running via MAMP