Need help: Sync gateway can't connect to Couchbase server (docker)

Couchbase Server
1

Hello guys, I’m having trouble when follow this guide: Tutorial - OpenID Connect Authentication for Sync Gateway with Keycloak | Couchbase Developer Portal

My sync gateway is not able to connect to Couchbase server.

2025-04-30T09:48:58.506Z [INF] Config: Couldn't initialize cluster agent: check server ports and cluster encryption setting: dial tcp 172.18.0.3:11210: connect: connection refused - will retry...

Here’s the docker commands that I ran:

  1. Keycloak
docker run -p 8080:8080 --name keycloak --network workshop2 -e KC_BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_USERNAME=admin -e KC_BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD=password quay.io/keycloak/keycloak:26.2.1 start-dev
  1. Couchbase server
docker run -d --name cb-server --network workshop2 -p 8091-8094:8091-8094 -p 11210:11210 couchbase/server-sandbox:7.6.5
  1. Sync gateway
docker run -p 4984-4985:4984-4985 --network workshop2 --name sync-gateway -d -v /root/OpenID_connect_tutorial/resources/SG_bootstrap-sync-gateway-config.json:/etc/sync_gateway/sync_gateway.json couchbase/sync-gateway:3.2.4-enterprise -adminInterface :4985 /etc/sync_gateway/sync_gateway.json

The gateway config: OpenID_connect_tutorial/resources/SG_bootstrap-sync-gateway-config.json at master · couchbaselabs/OpenID_connect_tutorial · GitHub

Thanks for helping!

2

This is a docker connectivity problem from the sync gateway container to the couchbase server problem. Sync Gateway can not access the URL couchbase://cb-server which is cb-server:11207.

I didn’t have a problem running only:

$ docker network create -d bridge workshop2
$ docker run -d --name cb-server --network workshop2 -p 8091-8094:8091-8094 -p 11210:11210 couchbase/server-sandbox:7.6.5
// created the SG_account on Couchbase Server
docker run -p 4984-4985:4984-4985 --network workshop2 --name sync-gateway -v ${PWD}/SG_bootstrap-sync-gateway-config.json:/etc/sync_gateway/sync_gateway.json couchbase/sync-gateway:3.2.4-enterprise -adminInterface :4985 /etc/sync_gateway/sync_gateway.json

I did not edit the configuration file at all from what was downloaded.

I tried this on Mac OS and Linux, but I don’t know if there would be something different in your environment.

Note: I literally did not run any of the other instructions including ones that could be suspect to me:

  1. edit /etc/hosts
  2. docker run -p 4984-4985:4984-4985 --network workshop2 --name sync-gateway -d -v pwd/SG_sync-gateway-config-french-cuisine.json:/etc/sync_gateway/sync_gateway.json couchbase/sync-gateway:2.7.2-enterprise -adminInterface :4985 /etc/sync_gateway/sync_gateway.json

The config file for SG_bootstrap-sync-gateway-config.json is correct for Sync Gateway 3.2.4, but the file for SG_sync-gateway-config-french-cuisine.json needs to be updated for Sync Gateway 3.0+

The next steps for investigating would be to look at the docker networking between your network bridge to see if 172.18.0.3 is routable from the Sync Gateway container.