How to connect to a Postgres server in a Docker (1.12.0) container on a Mac?

Question

The latest release of Docker doesn't use a virtual machine anymore, instead using a hypervisor to connect to the containers. This means I can no longer login to postgres with psql:

➜ postgres git:(master) ✗ docker run -d -p 5433:5432 db postgres
<sha>
➜ postgres git:(master) ✗ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
111f3bed4c52 db "/docker-entrypoint.s" 17 minutes ago Up 17 minutes 0.0.0.0:5433->5432/tcp zen_hugle
➜ postgres git:(master) ✗ psql -p 5433 -U postgres
psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
 Is the server running locally and accepting
 connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5433"?

I have also tried specifying localhost as the host, but that results in a strange output:

➜ postgres git:(master) ✗ psql -h localhost -p 5433 -U postgres
psql: %

Does anyone know what to do in this case? Thank you.

• JoshRagem: That second case looks like you are connected. Is something not working with that?
• András Váczi: I'm not sure it's the problem of Docker. Can you connect if you add -h localhost to the psql command?
• picardo: Sorry about the delay in responding. Yes, I can connect to the local postgres database at the port 5432. But I cannot connect to the one at 5433, which is in the docker container.

Answer 1

I had the same problem today. I discovered that you do have to specify the -h flag for it to work:

psql -U postgres -p 5433 -h localhost

You can also use the URI style connection string:

psql postgresql://postgres:<your_password>@localhost:5433

The default is "local socket" which does not work in the case of docker.