Docker For Mac Machine Ip

15-09-2021
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If you're running macOS or Windows you have a few options for installing Docker. There's even a third way too, and we'll compare them here.

Mac using docker-machine. When using docker-machine on your Mac, you need to use the IP of your machine. Considering you started the machine named default, you find the IP with. You will also need to setup routing from your Mac to the container networks via your VM’s new IP address. In my case the Docker network range is 172.22.0.0/16 and the Host Only adapter IP on the VM is 192.168.99.100. Sudo route add 172.22.0.0/16 192.168.99.100 Adding a permanent route to osx is bit more complex.

Firstly, list your machines: $ docker-machine ls NAME ACTIVE DRIVER STATE URL SWARM default. virtualbox Running tcp://192.168.99.100:2376 Then select one of the machines (the default one is called default) and: $ docker-machine ip default 192.168.99.100.

Quick Jump: OS and Hardware Requirements|Pros and Cons|Which One Should I Use?

If you’re on macOS or Windows you can install Docker with:

  1. Docker for Mac / Windows (now known as Docker Desktop)
  2. Docker Toolbox
  3. Running your own Virtual Machine and installing Docker yourself
Docker

All 3 of those options have their own pros and cons and in this article we’re going to cover them. If you’re looking for a high level overview of what Docker for Mac / Windows and Docker Toolbox is, then check out this article on getting to know Docker’s ecosystem.

OS and Hardware Requirements

It’s helpful to know what you can install before we compare everything, so let’s do that:

Docker for Mac (Docker Desktop)

Docker for Mac requires that you’re running Mojave 10.14+ or newer with an Intel CPU. M1 support is on its way.

You can run VirtualBox 6+ alongside Docker Desktop. This is pretty useful because you might have some legacy apps running in Vagrant / VirtualBox to deal with (I know I do!).

Docker for Windows (Docker Desktop)

As of May 27th 2020, Microsoft released Windows 10 build 2004 (Spring 2020) that allows you to run Docker Deskop on all editions of Windows 10, including Home thanks to WSL 2.

As of August 2020, Microsoft enabled WSL 2 support for Windows 10 builds 1903 + 1909.

For years prior to that you could only run it on Windows Pro, Enterprise or any edition that had Hyper-V available, but since August 2020 pretty much all supported versions of Windows 10 can use Docker Desktop.

You can also run VirtualBox 6+ alongside Docker Desktop too in case you have older projects using VirtualBox (perhaps with Vagrant too).

Docker Toolbox

Prior to mid-2020 this was still a reasonable way to run Docker on machines that couldn’t run Docker Desktop, but that’s no longer the case.

It’s now considered legacy and as of late 2020 it’s been officially deprecated.

Unless you’re using unsupported versions of Windows or have a really really ancient Mac you shouldn’t need to ever use this tool.

But if you’re in a pinch and you absolutely must use it, technically it’s still available at https://github.com/docker/toolbox/releases, but it’s no longer maintained by Docker.

Your own Virtual Machine

Docker will happily run inside of VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation or any other Type 1 / 2 Hypervisor that’s running a major distribution of Linux as a guest OS.

If for whatever reason you can’t use Docker Desktop then this solution would be better than using Docker Toolbox since you can install supported versions of Docker and you have full control over the environment.

Pros and Cons

Now for the good stuff!

Mac

Docker for Mac / Docker for Windows (Docker Desktop)

Pros

  • Offers the most “native” experience, you can easily use any terminal you you want since Docker is effectively running on localhost from macOS / Windows’ POV.

  • Docker is heavily developing and polishing this solution.

Cons

  • On certain macOS hardware combos the volume performance can be a little slow.

  • I can legit say there are not any “wow this sucks!” cons for Windows, it’s really solid.

Docker Toolbox

Pros
  • Offers an “out of the box” Docker experience if you have no other choice.
Cons

  • It’s deprecated by Docker and will receive no future maintenance.

  • You need to either use the Docker Quickstart Terminal, or configure your own terminal to connect to the Docker Daemon running a VM.

  • Not a native solution, so you’ll need to access your Docker Machine’s IP address if you’re developing web apps. Example: 192.168.99.100 instead of localhost.

  • Unless you jump through hoops, your code needs to live in your Windows user directory such as C:UsersNicksrcmyapp. Otherwise Docker won’t be able to find it.

  • Suffers from typical VirtualBox edge case bugs and mount performance issues.

Your own Virtual Machine

I’m not going to bother listing a pros and cons here because I wouldn’t recommend doing this UNLESS you’re stuck on Windows 7 / 8 or an older version of Windows 10 like 1809.

But more on that in a bit.

Which One Should I Use?

If you’re interested in Docker, you’re a smart person and you probably came to the conclusion that using Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows is a good idea as long as you can run it.

My recommendation would be to try Docker for Mac / Windows first, and test it against your actual use cases. The performance issues may or may not be a concern, especially since everyone’s needs and computer specs are different.

I’ve been using Docker Desktop on Windows for full time development since late 2018 and it’s been nothing short of fantastic. Currently I use it with WSL 2, but it was really good with WSL 1 along with Hyper-V too.

Stuck on an Old Version of Windows and Like Linux?

I want to mention a “roll your own VM” solution for Windows users because I feel like there’s an even better way to run Docker on Windows if you also like Linux and are stuck not being able to use modern versions of Windows 10.

Docker For Mac Machine Ip Address

It involves running VMWare Player in a special mode called “Unity mode”. This basically allows you to run Windows and Linux together seamlessly as 1 operating system.

There’s no dual booting and Linux applications (even graphical apps) run in their own floating windows. Then you can install Docker natively on Linux inside of the VM.

The performance is excellent and the entire set up is free too.

I used this set up for about 5 years until Docker Desktop was available. It gives you the best of both worlds. For example, I run high end audio / video apps on Windows while recording courses and screencasts that cover Linux content. It all works great (even for full time development).

You can watch a video guide and see screenshots on how to do that in this post on creating an awesome Linux development environment in Windows.

Are you using the Docker Toolbox, Docker for Mac / Windows or your own VM?

Christian Nadeau | January 24, 2017 | 4 Min Read

When using a containerized application, it’s important to be able to easily deploy them in the cloud. Docker-Machine is a tool that lets you install Docker Engine on Virtual Hosts. We’ll outline how we deploy containers and how to transfer files to/from the machine.

What is docker-machine?

When you have a containerized application, it’s important to be able to easily deploy them in the cloud, not only running them locally using Docker for Mac/Windows or from a Linux box locally. The tool to be able to create a remote virtual machine (VM) easily and manage those containers is called docker-machine.

In short, it allows you to control the docker engine of a VM created using docker-machine remotely. It even allows you to update the docker engine, restart the virtual machine (depending if the driver supports it), view its state and so on.

The main reason you would use docker-machine is when you want to create a deployment environment for your application and manage all the micro-services running on it. For instance, you can easily have a development, staging and production environment accessible from your own machine and update them accordingly.


The drivers concept acts as a connector to 3rd party services such as Azure, Amazon, etc. This allows you to create a complete set of resources around the actual VM in order to easily manage it from each service’s admin portal. There is also the generic driver which allows you to convert an actual virtual machine into a docker-machine.

NOTE: Reference material may be downloaded here

How to create a docker machine?

Azure

This will create a virtual machine on Azure and install docker engine on it.

VERY IMPORTANT:

This command will DELETE the Azure virtual machine and all related resources from your subscription! Use it with care.

VirtualBox

This will create a virtual machine on your local VirtualBox instance and install docker engine on it.

Generic

This will use the public identification key in order to connect to an existing machine (virtual or not) and install docker engine on it.

NOTE: This driver does not yet allow you to restart/shutdown the system.

You have a docker-machine VM, now what?

NOTE: We’ll suppose the docker-machine is created, reachable and named demo-machine

Here is a simple docker-compose.yml example:

Deploy containers locally

Start this hello world docker-compose locally:

Machine

You can curl it locally and see the content of the index.html page:

Now stop and delete the created container of the locally started docker-compose:

Docker For Mac Machine Ipad

Deploy containers to a remote host

Let’s do the same thing but on the remote demo-machine.
Change the local docker environment variables to the demo-machine ones:

You’re now targeting demo-machine when using any docker commands. To validate which docker-machine you point to, use this command:

Start the same hello world docker-compose defined locally:

Try to curl locally:

The docker commands are not run locally, they are run on the docker-machine we just configured! You must use the IP of the docker-machine itself as follow:

SSH

Once the machine is created, it’s really easy to ssh into it because the SSH certificates are generated on the machine and kept locally:

Docker For Mac Machine Ip Addresses

Copy files to/from the machine

You can use SCP command to send/receive files to/from the machine.

Here is how to copy ~/localfile.txt into the home folder of the demo-machine

Here is how to copy ~/remote.txt from the home folder of the demo-machine to the local home folder:

Cleaning up the local docker environment

Docker For Mac Machine Ip Address

If you want to go back to your local instance:

To validate:

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