Docker says: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it

Question

I was using docker everyday but today a problem occurred without changing anything. I opened docker terminal and tried to start one of my containers. But it gave this error:"No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it" I am using Windows 10.

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      ~~~ {~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~ ~~~ ~ /  ===- ~~~
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docker is configured to use the default machine with IP 192.168.99.100
For help getting started, check out the docs at https://docs.docker.com


admin@samsung MINGW64 ~
$ docker ps
An error occurred trying to connect: Get http://127.0.0.1:2375/v1.22/containers/json: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:2375: connectex: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

admin@samsung MINGW64 ~
$ docker version
Client:
 Version:      1.10.2
 API version:  1.22
 Go version:   go1.5.3
 Git commit:   c3959b1
 Built:        Mon Feb 22 22:37:33 2016
 OS/Arch:      windows/amd64
An error occurred trying to connect: Get http://127.0.0.1:2375/v1.22/version: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:2375: connectex: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.

Solution 1

1. Right-click on your PC
2. Properties
3. Advanced system settings
4. Environment Variables
5. Add new Variable: DOCKER_HOST
   Value: tcp://127.0.0.1:2375
6. Run Docker Desktop
7. bottom-right, right-click on Docker-Desktop
8. Settings
9. Enable the following option: "Expose daemon on tcp://localhost:2375 without TLS"

Solution 2

I've fixed that by going to Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager (could be searched in start menu), stopping the VM (default in my case) and then running Docker Quickstart Terminal again.

Also, please refer to this answer.

Solution 3

I was also facing the same issue and even tried by stopping and then restarting the default machine.

Solution: Finally, I restarted my system and then opened the new Docker quickstart terminal. After that I ran "docker run hello-world" again and then it got connected and pulled the hello-world from library/hello-world.

Solution 4

"Actively refused it" means that the host sent a reset instead of an ack when you tried to connect. It is therefore not a problem in your code. Either there is a firewall blocking the connection or the process that is hosting the service is not listening on that port. This may be because it is not running at all or because it is listening on a different port.

Once you start the process hosting your service, try netstat -anb (requires admin privileges) to verify that it is running and listening on the expected port.

Solution 5

For me, this was caused by being connected to VPN.

Disconnect from VPN to allow a connecting to the local VirtualBox / Docker instance.

View more solutions

Comments

[mpen]

Yesssss! This is the only solution that has worked for me. With or without "Expose daemon" -- it's just the environment variable I needed on the Windows side (already had it set under WSL).

[s3c]

Awesome solution. For me the "Expose daemon..." checkbox must be ticked, otherwise $ docker container list -a outputs error during connect: Get "http://127.0.0.1:2375/v1.24/containers/json?all=1": dial tcp 127.0.0.1:2375: connectex: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.