How to access Consul's DNS interface from a hostmachine?

Question

I've been trying to create an environment for "microservices". Two of the key components are Docker and Consul, both run on a virtual machine (I've used Vagrant to create this vm). When I ssh into the vm I'm able to use the dig command line tool to access the DNS interface Consul provides.

The thing is: I'd like to be able to access the DNS interface from my host machine. I've given a static IP to the vm but this did not resolve my problem. I also have opened port 53 of my vm, which also didn't resolve my problem.

This is my Vagrant set-up script for my vm:

config.vm.define :app1 do |app1|
# Every Vagrant virtual environment requires a box to build off of.
app1.vm.box = "ubuntu/trusty64"

# Create a forwarded port mapping which allows access to a specific port
# within the machine from a port on the host machine. In the example below,
# accessing "localhost:8080" will access port 80 on the guest machine.
app1.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 3000, host: 3000
app1.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 53, host: 53
app1.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8500, host: 8500
app1.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 15672, host: 15672

# Open 32 ports for Docker containers
for port in 32768..32800
  app1.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: port, host: port
end

# Create a private network, which allows host-only access to the machine
# using a specific IP.
app1.vm.network :private_network, ip: "200.0.0.1"

app1.vm.hostname = "server-1"

config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|
  v.memory = 1024
end

This is how I've started a Docker-container with Consul:

sudo docker run --name consul -h $HOSTNAME -p 0.0.0.0:8300:8300 -p 0.0.0.0:8301:8301 -p 0.0.0.0:8301:8301/udp -p 0.0.0.0:8302:8302 -p 0.0.0.0:8302:8302/udp -p 0.0.0.0:8400:8400 -p 0.0.0.0:8500:8500 -p 0.0.0.0:53:53 -p 0.0.0.0:53:53/udp -d progrium/consul -advertise 200.0.0.1 -server -bootstrap

I've tried using the following with dig from my host machine:

dig @200.0.0.1 someservice.service.consul SRV

This responded with:

; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3ubuntu0.2-Ubuntu <<>> @200.0.0.1 someservice.service.consul ANY
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Is there any way I can make the Consul DNS interface accessible from my host machine? Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Here's what works for me:

$ docker pull gliderlabs/consul
$ docker run -d -p 8400:8400 -p 8500:8500 -p 8600:53/udp --name node1 -h node1 gliderlabs/consul agent -server -bootstrap -client=0.0.0.0 -data-dir /tmp/consul
$ curl '127.0.0.1:8500/v1/catalog/nodes' 
$ # returns [{"Node":"node1","Address":"172.17.0.34"}]

now dns is available at containers IP (172.17.0.34), don't know why not at 0.0.0.0:

$ dig   @172.17.0.34 -p 8600 node1.node.consul
$ # returns:

; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3ubuntu0.3-Ubuntu <<>> @172.17.0.34 -p 8600 node1.node.consul
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4812
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;node1.node.consul.     IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
node1.node.consul.  0   IN  A   172.17.0.34

;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: 172.17.0.34#8600(172.17.0.34)
;; WHEN: Wed Jul 22 08:23:51 CEST 2015
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 68