Docker container for Postgres 9.1 not exposing port 5432 to host

Question

I\'m trying to use a Docker container to run a PostgreSQL server, and connect with it from my host machine.

My configuration is:

• Host machine: Mac OS X

Answer 1

It's 2018 and I just had a similar problem. The solution for me seemed to be with the order of props to docker. e.g. this resulted in no port being exposed;

docker run -d --name posttest postgres:alpine -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=fred -p 5432:5432

while this worked fine (image exposed port 5432 as expected);

docker run --name posttest -d -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=fred postgres:alpine

Answer 2

Your docker host is a virtual machine, which has it's own IP affffdres. You can detect this IP address by entering the following command:

docker-machine ip

The answer will be something like 192.168.99.100

When you have mapped the ports using the -p 5432:5432 switch, you will be able to connect to postgres with any tool from your dev machine using the IP address mentioned.

Answer 3

I had a similar issue. My problem was simply 0.0.0.0 not mapping to localhost so I just had to add to psql

psql --host=0.0.0.0

This is presuming

docker port <container name>

outputs

5432/tcp -> 0.0.0.0:5432

Answer 4

Other answers work, but don't explain why they work.

Given the command:

psql -h localhost -p 5432:5432 -U postgres

localhost is actually a special value that tells psql to look for a unix socket connection, instead of going over TCP. We can't use unix sockets to connect to docker services.

Changing the command like so fixes it, by forcing TCP:

psql -h 127.0.0.1 -p 5432:5432 -U postgres

That will work as long as you docker run ... -p 5432:5432 .... Specifying the IP returned by docker-machine ip also forces TCP, so that also works.

Answer 5

I was able to connect using container IP or host IP, except localhost (127.0.0.1).

To get container id run

docker ps

Find required container id and run

docker inspect --format='{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' <container_id>

Port must be exposed.

Here is an example of docker-compose.yml which starts two containers postgres and adminer, which is database management tool you can use to connect to postgres:

version: '3'
services:
  adminer:
    image: adminer
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:8080
  postgres:
    image: postgres:11.4-alpine
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: postgres
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres

Answer 6

I had a similar problem working in a VMWare virtual machine with Lubuntu. The VM had been paused and then was restarted. The PostgreSQL Docker container was correctly mapped and listening on localhost:5432, but I always got:

psql: server closed the connection unexpectedly
    This probably means the server terminated abnormally
    before or while processing the request.

Restarting the VM solved the problem in my case.