Chrome inside docker ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

Question

We're trying to run chrome inside a docker container.

The docker run command after the build is the following:

docker run \
 --rm \
 -ti \
 --add-host=example.my_domain.localhost:172.21.0.13 \
 --env="APP_ENV=test" \
 --privileged \
 --volume "$volumeDir:/app" \
 --cap-add SYS_ADMIN \
 --net custom_network \
 built_image_tag bash

172.21.0.13 is an example to indicate the ip of another container in the same network.

Once inside the container the host file look something like this:

127.0.0.1   localhost
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
172.21.0.13 example.my_domain.localhost
172.21.0.15 7229a8eac11e

and as expected running:

$ wget example.my_domain.localhost
Connecting to example.my_domain.localhost (example.my_domain.localhost)|172.21.0.13|:80... connected.

result in a correct connection

running a connection in the browser, however :

$ google-chrome http://example.my_domain.localhost

result in a ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED.

The browser is able to navigate to any other website.

thanks.

EDIT: Please note that both the wget and the opening of the browser are launched inside the container, as we use chrome headless for test purposes.

Answer 1

In my case I'm using spatie/browsershot, but I believe the underlying issues are the same, so I hope my answer is useful.

My ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED error resolved when the following pieces were in place:

1) The docker container hosting your site needs a network alias.

This is instead of adding a hosts file entry in the Puppeteer container, which Chrome did not appear to honour in my testing.

services:
  my-nginx-container:
    ...
    networks:
      internal:
        aliases:
          # so we can access our sites directly (by their domain) from other containers.
          - my-docker-site.com

2) Add the following Puppeteer args

--disable-web-security' and --enable-features=NetworkService.

I realise the original question was not asking about Browsershot, but for that the args are added like so:

$browsershot = Browsershot::url('https://my-docker-site.com')
    ->setOption('args', ['--disable-web-security', '--enable-features=NetworkService'])

Doing so allowed me to run both Browsershot and Puppeteer inside a container, and for Chrome to be able to access sites hosted inside other containers, by referencing their domain name.