How to access a linux container running on windows host on a LAN network

Docker Desktop
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1

I am trying to run a Linux container on an Windows 11 machine and I want to be able to access the container on my local LAN network.

My goal is to run a ROS in then container and talk to other nodes on my LAN.

Is this possible to do? I have tried both passing host and creating a macvlan network. I have not had success with either. I am not sure how to solve this problem

2

Are you running your container in Docker Desktop for Windows, or Docker-CE in WSL2 or a vm?

Docker Desktop will add a portforwarding rule that allows other machines in your lan to access the published port of a container attached to a bridge network. Host and macvlan do work, but are in the scope of the utility vm that runs Docker Desktop - so it will not work as you need it to work.

With Docker-CE in WSL2 or a vm, you need to setup portforwarding yourself.

3

I am using Docker desktop for windows. Does that mean that I should not pass in host and use the default bridge network? Do I manually have to pass in any ports?

4

Use a bridge network, publish the container ports, and you should be good to go.

5

Do I create a bridge network as follows:

 docker network create -d bridge   --subnet=192.168.50.0/24   --gateway=192.168.50.1   -o parent=wlo1   my_network

Then pass it into my container:

 docker run --name=myNODE  -it --network my_network -p 8080:80   ubuntu bash

will this make the IP of the container appear on my network so that I can ping it from another computer?

6

Use:

docker network create -d bridge   my_network
docker run --name=mycontainer -it --network my_network -p 8080:80   ubuntu bash

Docker Desktop will make port 8080 accessible on the host on localhost and lan ip.

No. If this is what you need, then you need Linux + docker-ce, and need to use a macvlan network. If you run Linux and docker-ce in a vm on your Windows host, this may or may not work, depending on how the virtualization solution work. I won’t be able to give any recommendations or answer questions in that direction.

7

Thank you for the help and the patience. I am still having trouble and this is possible a ROS issue. When I use the bridge I get a 172.18.x.x IP address. I can run roscore but it does not seem like other machine on the network can see the rosmaster.

8

Does it mean that it depends on network broadcast message to be detected by clients on other machines? This is not possible with Docker Desktop.

Docker’s Bridge network + portfowarding is useful, if you have incoming traffic on specific udp or tcp ports on a container. It will not work with broadcast or multicast messages.

The 2nd half of my last post recommends what needs to be done. If you should consider running a vm solution on your Windows host, make sure it is able to assign ip’s of your lan to the vm.