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

You can pass it as an environment variable like this. Generally Node is the host that it is running in. The hostname is defaulted to the host name of the node when it is created.

docker service create -e 'FOO={{.Node.Hostname}}' nginx  

Then you can do docker ps to get the process ID and look at the env

$ docker exec -it c81640b6d1f1 env                                                                                                                                    PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
HOSTNAME=c81640b6d1f1
TERM=xterm
FOO=docker-desktop
NGINX_VERSION=1.17.4
NJS_VERSION=0.3.5
PKG_RELEASE=1~buster
HOME=/root

An example of usage would be with metricbeats so you know which node is having system issues which I put in https://github.com/trajano/elk-swarm:

  metricbeat:
    image: docker.elastic.co/beats/metricbeat:7.4.0
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      - /sys/fs/cgroup:/hostfs/sys/fs/cgroup:ro
      - /proc:/hostfs/proc:ro
      - /:/hostfs:ro
    user: root
    hostname: "{{.Node.Hostname}}"
    command:
      - -E
      - |
        metricbeat.modules=[
          {
            module:docker,
            hosts:[unix:///var/run/docker.sock],
            period:10s,
            enabled:true
          }
        ] 
      - -E
      - processors={1:{add_docker_metadata:{host:unix:///var/run/docker.sock}}} 
      - -E
      - output.elasticsearch.enabled=false
      - -E
      - output.logstash.enabled=true
      - -E
      - output.logstash.hosts=["logstash:5044"]
    deploy:
      mode: global