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

Answer 2

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