[Solved] Access URL from separate container

Product support balenaOS
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1

I have two separate containers running on a Rpi3, one of which uses the base image from the Balena WPE example in order to get the Webkit browser running. I have a separate service running that’s running a webpack dev server. I can’t seem to access the URL from the webpack container, despite having exposed the ports. I can access the page from the URL on my local network using the <ip>:<port>.

From this post: Docker-compose network service names not resolving correctly it was my understanding that I’d be able to access the page hosted by the other container using the service name, eg. <service_name>:<port>, or am I mistaken?

2

Hi @craigson
That is right, it should work. I sounds as if adding network configuring might get in the way of this for some users. Have you got networks configured ?
To be able to help you further it would be good to know what release of balena OS you are working with and what your docker compose file looks like…
Regards
Thomas

4

Hi @samothx,

BalenaOS: balenaOS 2.36.0+rev2

docker-compose.yml:

version: '2'

services:
  server:
    build:
      context: ./apps/server
      dockerfile: Dockerfile.template
    privileged: true
    stdin_open: true
    tty: true

  kiosk-browser:
    restart: always
    build:
      context: ./apps/kiosk
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    privileged: true
    depends_on:
      - server
    # ports:
    #   - 8080:8080

  kiosk-app:
    build:
      context: ./apps/client
      dockerfile: Dockerfile.template
      args:
        NPM_TOKEN: ${NPM_TOKEN}
    env_file:
      - .env
    privileged: true
    ports:
      - 9045:9045
5

@craigson First of all, there are some unsupported fields that you have specified in your docker-compose (tty and stdin_open), as noted here: https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/supervisor/docker-compose/. I see you have three services, which one are you trying to access from which one? Maybe you can try explicitly setting network_mode: host for each service, and using expose instead of ports for the one that is only accessed internally. As far as I am aware, it should work as it is, but it is good to try if setting the network mode will maybe solve the problem.

6

Hi @sradevski,
Either adding the network_mode or exposing the port seemed to do the trick. All that was left was to set the WPE_URL to point to localhost.

Thanks for the help.

7

Hey @craigson, glad I could help. If you need any further assistance, feel free to reach to us and the community on the forums.