Accessing Docker Container on Centos Server

Question

I've managed to deploy a Django app inside a docker container on my personal Mac using localhost with Apache. For this, I use docker-compose with the build and up commands. I'm trying to run the same Django app on a CentOS server using a docker image generated on my local machine. Apache is also running on the server on port 90.

docker run -it -d --hostname xxx.xxx.xxx -p 9090:9090 --name test idOfImage

How can I access this container with Apache using the hostname and port number in the URL? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

From other containers the best way to access this container is to attach both to the same network and use the container's --name as a DNS name and the internal port (the second port from the -p option, which isn't strictly required for this case); from outside a container or from other hosts use the host's IP address or DNS name and the published port (the first port from the -p option).

The docker run --hostname option isn't especially useful; the only time you'd want to specify it is if you have some magic licensed software that only ran if it had a particular hostname.

Avoid localhost in a Docker context, except for the very specific case where you know you're running a process on the host system outside a container and you're trying to access a container's published port or some other service running on the host. Don't use "localhost" as a generic term, it has a very specific context-dependent meaning (every process believes it's running "on localhost").