Docker/Neo4j: Port forwarding on Mac OS X not working
Date: 2014-11-27 12:28:14

Prompted by http://ognjenbubalo.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/creating-graph-of-software-technologies.html[Ognjen Bubalo's excellent blog post] I thought it was about time I tried running Neo4j on a docker container on my Mac Book Pro to make it easier to play around with different data sets.

I got the container up and running by following Ognien's instructions and had the following ports forwarded to my host machine:

[source,bash]
----

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                 COMMAND                CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                                              NAMES
c62f8601e557        tpires/neo4j:latest   "/bin/bash -c /launc   About an hour ago   Up About an hour    0.0.0.0:49153->1337/tcp, 0.0.0.0:49154->7474/tcp   neo4j
----

This should allow me to access Neo4j on port 49154 but when I tried to access that host:port pair I got a connection refused message:

[source,bash]
----

$ curl -v http://localhost:49154
* Adding handle: conn: 0x7ff369803a00
* Adding handle: send: 0
* Adding handle: recv: 0
* Curl_addHandleToPipeline: length: 1
* - Conn 0 (0x7ff369803a00) send_pipe: 1, recv_pipe: 0
* About to connect() to localhost port 49154 (#0)
*   Trying ::1...
*   Trying 127.0.0.1...
*   Trying fe80::1...
* Failed connect to localhost:49154; Connection refused
* Closing connection 0
curl: (7) Failed connect to localhost:49154; Connection refused
----

My first thought was the maybe Neo4j hadn't started up correctly inside the container so I checked the logs:

[source,bash]
----

$ docker logs --tail=10 c62f8601e557
10:59:12.994 [main] INFO  o.e.j.server.handler.ContextHandler - Started o.e.j.w.WebAppContext@2edfbe28{/webadmin,jar:file:/usr/share/neo4j/system/lib/neo4j-server-2.1.5-static-web.jar!/webadmin-html,AVAILABLE}
10:59:13.449 [main] INFO  o.e.j.server.handler.ContextHandler - Started o.e.j.s.ServletContextHandler@192efb4e{/db/manage,null,AVAILABLE}
10:59:13.699 [main] INFO  o.e.j.server.handler.ContextHandler - Started o.e.j.s.ServletContextHandler@7e94c035{/db/data,null,AVAILABLE}
10:59:13.714 [main] INFO  o.e.j.w.StandardDescriptorProcessor - NO JSP Support for /browser, did not find org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet
10:59:13.715 [main] INFO  o.e.j.server.handler.ContextHandler - Started o.e.j.w.WebAppContext@3e84ae71{/browser,jar:file:/usr/share/neo4j/system/lib/neo4j-browser-2.1.5.jar!/browser,AVAILABLE}
10:59:13.807 [main] INFO  o.e.j.server.handler.ContextHandler - Started o.e.j.s.ServletContextHandler@4b6690b1{/,null,AVAILABLE}
10:59:13.819 [main] INFO  o.e.jetty.server.ServerConnector - Started ServerConnector@495350f0{HTTP/1.1}{c62f8601e557:7474}
10:59:13.900 [main] INFO  o.e.jetty.server.ServerConnector - Started ServerConnector@23ad0c5a{SSL-HTTP/1.1}{c62f8601e557:7473}
2014-11-27 10:59:13.901+0000 INFO  [API] Server started on: http://c62f8601e557:7474/
2014-11-27 10:59:13.902+0000 INFO  [API] Remote interface ready and available at [http://c62f8601e557:7474/]
----

Nope! It's up and running perfectly fine which suggested the problemw was with port forwarding.

I eventually found my way to Chris Jones' 'http://viget.com/extend/how-to-use-docker-on-os-x-the-missing-guide[How to use Docker on OS X: The Missing Guide]' which explained the problem:

____
The Problem: Docker forwards ports from the container to the host, which is boot2docker, not OS X. The Solution: Use the VM's IP address.
____

So to access Neo4j on my machine I need to use the VM's IP address rather than localhost. We can get the VM's IP address like so:

[source,bash]
----

$ boot2docker ip

The VM's Host only interface IP address is: 192.168.59.103
----

Let's strip out that surrounding text though:

[source,bash]
----

$ boot2docker ip 2> /dev/null
192.168.59.103
----

Now if we cURL using that IP instead:

[source,bash]
----

$ curl -v http://192.168.59.103:49154
* About to connect() to 192.168.59.103 port 49154 (#0)
*   Trying 192.168.59.103...
* Adding handle: conn: 0x7fd794003a00
* Adding handle: send: 0
* Adding handle: recv: 0
* Curl_addHandleToPipeline: length: 1
* - Conn 0 (0x7fd794003a00) send_pipe: 1, recv_pipe: 0
* Connected to 192.168.59.103 (192.168.59.103) port 49154 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.30.0
> Host: 192.168.59.103:49154
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
< Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
< Content-Length: 112
* Server Jetty(9.0.5.v20130815) is not blacklisted
< Server: Jetty(9.0.5.v20130815)
<
{
  "management" : "http://192.168.59.103:49154/db/manage/",
  "data" : "http://192.168.59.103:49154/db/data/"
* Connection #0 to host 192.168.59.103 left intact
----

Happy days!

Chris has solutions to lots of other common problems people come across when using Docker with Mac OS X so it's worth http://viget.com/extend/how-to-use-docker-on-os-x-the-missing-guide[having a flick through his post].