How to access host port from docker container

Question

I have a docker container running jenkins. As part of the build process, I need to access a web server that is run locally on the host machine. Is there a way the host web s

Answer 1

You can access the local webserver which is running in your host machine in two ways.

1. Approach 1 with public IP

   Use host machine public IP address to access webserver in Jenkins docker container.

2. Approach 2 with the host network

   Use "--net host" to add the Jenkins docker container on the host's network stack. Containers which are deployed on host's stack have entire access to the host interface. You can access local webserver in docker container with a private IP address of the host machine.

NETWORK ID          NAME                      DRIVER              SCOPE
b3554ea51ca3        bridge                    bridge              local
2f0d6d6fdd88        host                      host                local
b9c2a4bc23b2        none                      null                local

Start a container with the host network Eg: docker run --net host -it ubuntu and run ifconfig to list all available network IP addresses which are reachable from docker container.

Eg: I started a nginx server in my local host machine and I am able to access the nginx website URLs from Ubuntu docker container.

docker run --net host -it ubuntu

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
a604f7af5e36        ubuntu              "/bin/bash"         22 seconds ago      Up 20 seconds                           ubuntu_server

Accessing the Nginx web server (running in local host machine) from Ubuntu docker container with private network IP address.

root@linuxkit-025000000001:/# curl 192.168.x.x -I
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.15.10
Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2019 05:12:12 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 612
Last-Modified: Tue, 26 Mar 2019 14:04:38 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
ETag: "5c9a3176-264"
Accept-Ranges: bytes