Table of Contents

About

A host in docker can be:

  • a machine where docker server run
  • or a network

This page is about the machine, to see the network, see the page Docker - Host Network.

An host (or machine) is:

  • a virtual host that you can see running in your virtual machine provider (such as virtual box).
  • is managed through the docker-machine executable (creation, start, stop,…)

The host operating system is boot2docker.

Docker Host Virtualbox

Management

Environment variable

Windows DOS shell

docker-machine env
SET DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY=1
SET DOCKER_HOST=tcp://192.168.99.100:2376
SET DOCKER_CERT_PATH=C:\Users\gerard\.docker\machine\machines\default
SET DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME=default
REM Run this command to configure your shell:
REM     @FOR /f "tokens=*" %i IN ('"C:\DockerToolbox\docker-machine.exe" env') DO @%i

Linux bash shell

docker-machine env --shell=bash
export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY="1"
export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://192.168.99.100:2376"
export DOCKER_CERT_PATH="C:\Users\gerard\.docker\machine\machines\default"
export DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME="default"
export COMPOSE_CONVERT_WINDOWS_PATHS="true"
# Run this command to configure your shell:
# eval $("C:\DockerToolbox\docker-machine.exe" env --shell=bash)

List

docker-machine ls
NAME      ACTIVE   DRIVER       STATE     URL   SWARM   DOCKER   ERRORS
default            virtualbox   Timeout

where:

Driver

The driver indicate the provider on which to create the machine (ie the virtual engine).

Example:

See the Full List

You can register an already existing docker host by passing the daemon url.

docker-machine create --driver none --url=tcp://50.134.234.20:2376 custombox
docker-machine ls
NAME        ACTIVE   DRIVER    STATE     URL
custombox   *        none      Running   tcp://50.134.234.20:2376

Name

The environment variable DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME has the name of the host machine.

By default, you may find Moby because docker-compose comes from the Moby Project. This is the name that we will find in the host file (/etc/host) in the docker-compose service.

How to find your host name:

  • The DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME env variable
$ echo $DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME
default

  • Otherwise you see it in the NAME column when you list your hosts. See list

IP

Three ways to find the IP dependent of your configuration

Name

On windows, you can use the name host.docker.internal to reach the host.

Nat

If you are using a NAT, to determine the Docker Windows host IP interface (By default, this is the interface named vEthernet (DockerNAT) on the IP 10.0.75.1)

  • at the command line with netsh
netsh interface ip show addresses
# and to filter for one interface
netsh interface ip show addresses "vEthernet (DockerNAT)"
Configuration for interface "vEthernet (DockerNAT)"
    DHCP enabled:                         No
    IP Address:                           10.0.75.1
    Subnet Prefix:                        10.0.75.0/24 (mask 255.255.255.0)
    InterfaceMetric:                      15

  • Windows graphically

Docker Host Ip Nat

Docker Machine

docker-machine ip default
192.168.99.100

The DOCKER_HOST environment variable contains also the IP adress of the host

This IP is assigned by the docker-machine create subcommand.

Info !

docker info                                                                                            
Containers: 35                                                                                           
 Running: 1                                                                                              
 Paused: 0                                                                                               
 Stopped: 34                                                                                             
Images: 45                                                                                               
Server Version: 1.12.3                                                                                   
Storage Driver: aufs                                                                                     
 Root Dir: /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker/aufs                                                                 
 Backing Filesystem: extfs                                                                               
 Dirs: 186                                                                                               
 Dirperm1 Supported: true                                                                                
Logging Driver: json-file                                                                                
Cgroup Driver: cgroupfs                                                                                  
Plugins:                                                                                                 
 Volume: local                                                                                           
 Network: bridge host null overlay                                                                       
 Log:                                                                                                    
Swarm: inactive                                                                                          
Runtimes: runc                                                                                           
Default Runtime: runc                                                                                    
Init Binary:                                                                                             
containerd version:                                                                                      
runc version:                                                                                            
init version:                                                                                            
Security Options:                                                                                        
 seccomp                                                                                                 
Kernel Version: 4.4.27-boot2docker                                                                       
Operating System: Boot2Docker 1.12.3 (TCL 7.2); HEAD : 7fc7575 - Thu Oct 27 17:23:17 UTC 2016            
OSType: linux                                                                                            
Architecture: x86_64                                                                                     
CPUs: 2                                                                                                  
Total Memory: 7.79GiB                                                                                    
Name: default                                                                                            
ID: 6CCC:JOTU:XXK3:ZJV6:7QTA:Y5LZ:EUAM:D3VM:XTVA:NQOY:5M2Z:KSC5                                          
Docker Root Dir: /mnt/sda1/var/lib/docker                                                                
Debug Mode (client): false                                                                               
Debug Mode (server): true                                                                                
 File Descriptors: 23                                                                                    
 Goroutines: 41                                                                                          
 System Time: 2017-10-24T15:05:24.245401217Z                                                             
 EventsListeners: 0                                                                                      
Registry: https://index.docker.io/v1/                                                                    
Labels:                                                                                                  
 provider=virtualbox                                                                                     
Experimental: false                                                                                      
Insecure Registries:                                                                                     
 127.0.0.0/8                                                                                             
Live Restore Enabled: false                                                                              

where you can see:

Disk Location

Docker Storage Locations

Data Persistence

Changes outside of the /var/lib/docker and /var/lib/boot2docker directories will be lost after powering down or restarting the host.

More ? See local customisation with persistent partition