Unable to make Docker container use OpenConnect VPN connection

Question

I have a VM running Ubuntu 16.04, on which I want to deploy an application packaged as a Docker container. The application needs to be able to perform an HTTP request towards a server under VPN (e.g. server1.vpn-remote.com)

I successfully configured the host VM in order to connect to the VPN through openconnect, I can turn this connection on/off using a systemd service.

Unfortunately, when I run docker run mycontainer, neither the host nor the container are able to reach server1.vpn-remote.com. Weirdly enough, there is no error displayed in the VPN connection service logs, which is stuck to the openconnect messages confirming a successful connection.

If I restart the VPN connection after starting mycontainer, the host machine is able to access server1.vpn-remote.com, but not the container. Moreover, if I issue any command like docker run/start/stop/restart on mycontainer or any other container, the connection gets broken again even for the host machine.

NOTE: I already checked on the ip routes and there seems to be no conflict between Docker and VPN subnets.

NOTE: running the container with --net="host" results in both host and container being able to access the VPN but I would like to avoid this option as I will eventually make a docker compose deployment which requires all containers to run in bridge mode.

Thanks in advance for your help

EDIT: I figured out it is a DNS issue, as I'm able to ping the IP corresponding to server1.vpn-remote.com even after the VPN connection seemed to be failing. I'm going through documentation regarding DNS management with Docker and Docker Compose and their usage of the host's /etc/resolv.conf file.

Answer 1

I hope you don't still need help six months later! Some of the details are different, but this sounds a bit like a problem I had. In my case the solution was a bit disappointing: after you've connected to your VPN, restart the docker daemon:

sudo systemctl restart docker

I'm making some inferences here, but it seems that, when the daemon starts, it makes some decisions/configs based on the state of the network at that time. In my case, the daemon starts when I boot up. Unsurprisingly, when I boot up, I haven't had a chance to connect to the VPN yet. As a result, my container traffic, including DNS lookups, goes through my network directly.

Hat tip to this answer for guiding me down the correct path.