How to get the hostname of the docker host from inside a docker container on that host without env vars

Question

What are the ways get the docker host\'s hostname from inside a container running on that host besides using environment variables? I know I can pass the hostname as

Answer 1

I think the reason that I have the same issue is a bug in the latest Docker for Mac beta, but buried in the comments there I was able to find a solution that worked for me & my team. We're using this for local development, where we need our containerized services to talk to a monolith as we work to replace it. This is probably not a production-viable solution.

On the host machine, alias a known available IP address to the loopback interface:

$ sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 10.200.10.1/24

Then add that IP with a hostname to your docker config. In my case, I'm using docker-compose, so I added this to my docker-compose.yml:

extra_hosts:
# configure your host to alias 10.200.10.1 to the loopback interface:
#       sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 10.200.10.1/24
- "relevant_hostname:10.200.10.1"

I then verified that the desired host service (a web server) was available from inside the container by attaching to a bash session, and using wget to request a page from the host's web server:

$ docker exec -it container_name /bin/bash
$ wget relevant_hostname/index.html
$ cat index.html