Redis Docker connection refused

Question

I just built the redis docker instance

$ docker pull redis

After which I ran it like this.

$ docker run --name=redis --detach=true --publish=6379:6379 redis

I get the following

$ docker ps 
key        redis   "/sbin/entrypoint.sh"    22 minutes ago      Up 22 minutes       0.0.0.0:6379->6379/tcp   redis

To me the above means that it is now running listening on port 6379 on localhost or 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0.

But to my great surprise, when I try to connect is responds with connection refused.

Please can someone throw some light.

Solution 1

You need to provide more information about your environment (OS, Docker installation, etc), but basically, if you start your Redis container like this:

docker run --name=redis-devel --publish=6379:6379 --hostname=redis --restart=on-failure --detach redis:latest

It should expose the port no matter what. The only reason you might not be able to connect to it, is if you've messed up your bridge interface, if you're on Linux, or you're using a docker machine with its own network interface and IP address and you're not connecting to that IP address. If you're using Docker for Mac, then that only supports routing to the localhost address, since bridging on Mac hosts doesn't work yet.

Anyway, on MacOS with Docker for Mac (not the old Docker Toolbox), the following should be enough to get your started:

➜  ~ docker run --name=redis-devel --publish=6379:6379 --hostname=redis --restart=on-failure --detach redis:latest
6bfc6250cc505f82b56a405c44791f193ec5b53469f1625b289ef8a5d7d3b61e
➜  ~ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                    NAMES
6bfc6250cc50        redis:latest        "docker-entrypoint.s…"   10 minutes ago      Up 10 minutes       0.0.0.0:6379->6379/tcp   redis-devel
➜  ~ redis-cli ping
PONG
➜  ~ 

Solution 2

Find the discovered port of the redis and use that to connect

docker inspect --format='{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' redis-server

Solution 3

If you're using the Redis 6.2 configuration example as a starting place (like I was when I encountered this issue), the combination of the bind 127.0.0.1 directive and protected-mode yes was not allowing for communication between Docker containers. For my purposes I commented out the bind directive and set the protected-mode directive to no -- but heed the provided warnings about not exposing Redis to the open internet.

Solution 4

I recomend you to use docker-compose https://docs.docker.com/compose/

in you docker-compose.yml

redis:                                                                          
  image: redis
ports:
  - "6379:6379" 

After this you can run:

$ docker-compose run redis /bin/bash
$ redis-server
$ redis-cli ping

Should return: PONG

Solution 5

It looks like a networking problem caused by the redis client, as your redis server looks fine.

Mind that the redis docker page is a little confusing. It says that to connect to your redis via redis-cli, you should type in:

docker run -it --network some-network --rm redis redis-cli -h some-redis

This however creates another docker container which is basically the redis client. It cannot connect to your redis server because they are not connected to the same network.

You could do something a little different as following:

docker network create some-network
docker run --name redis-server --network some-network -d redis
docker run -it --network some-network --rm redis redis-cli -h redis-server

The other option is to indeed map the port 6379 like you did, however it will require from you to use a redis client which should be downloaded to your own computer.

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