Cannot connect to redis running as container with boot2docker

Question

On my MBP, with latest boot2docker installed, I have the following Dockerfile:

FROM redis:3.0.3
CMD redis-server --bind 0.0.0.0

I run the following:

docker build .
docker run --rm ba09b207db42 # where ba09b207db42 is the container id returned by the build command

Then I run:

redis-cli -h `boot2docker ip`

And I get the error:

Could not connect to Redis at 192.168.59.103:6379: Connection refused

What am I missing?

Solution

You forgot to expose the port. Simply run the container like this:

docker run --rm -p 6379:6379 ba09b207db42

Additionally:

• You could give the image a name so you would not need to work with ids: docker build -t myimage .

• You could then start the container in background so that it does not "block" your terminal: docker run --name mycontainer -d -p 6379:6379 myimage

Comments

[WispyCloud]

Thanks, I could see the port open in docker ps as the port is exposed by the redis image so I thought it wasn't needed but this definitely solved it (facepalm).

[Henrik Sachse]

The ports that you see with docker ps are open but only to other containers running on the same host. When you need to access them from outside of docker you need to specify such port mappings.

[WispyCloud]

Thanks a ton for the additional explanation!

[Shiv Krishna Jaiswal]

What if there is another container and we want to connect this redis inside that container?