Docker - Postgres and pgAdmin 4 : Connection refused

I too had the case when you're able to connect with psql command on terminal but not with pgAdmin4. The following solution worked for me.

First -

docker ps

From there you'll get the container name/ID of the postgres container, then do -

docker inspect name_of_container_here

It'll give you something like this -

 "Networks": {
                "bridge": {
                    "IPAMConfig": null,
                    "Links": null,
                    "Aliases": null,
                    "NetworkID": "f35dbe66b36cd38673aad6e1278ad33031ef9d5abd34582d4b91955e288f855e",
                    "EndpointID": "2e63ea59e9d0de7526bb02ba29bc0b16bcad51b8963127ad380416d15da994db",
                    "Gateway": "172.17.0.1",
                    "IPAddress": "172.17.0.2",
                    "IPPrefixLen": 16,
                    "IPv6Gateway": "",
                    "GlobalIPv6Address": "",
                    "GlobalIPv6PrefixLen": 0,
                    "MacAddress": "02:42:ac:11:00:02",
                    "DriverOpts": null
                }
            }

Note the IPAddress and provide that while creating a new server in pgAdmin4 -

I had the same issue and I solved it in a non-canonical way, but very satisfactory to my local workflow.

I always start my postgresql container with a docker-compose.yaml file. So I just added the pgAdmin to the same compose file:

version: "3.7"
services:
  my_awesome_db:
    image: postgres:latest
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
    container_name: postgresql-local
    volumes:
      - "/var/run/postgres.sock:/var/run/postgres/postgres.sock"
      - "/home/myuser/docker-apps/volumes/postgres-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data"
  pg_admin:
    image: dpage/pgadmin4:latest
    container_name: pgadmin4
    ports:
      - "15432:80"
    environment:
      - GUNICORN_THREADS=1
      - [email protected]
      - PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD=does_not_matter
    depends_on:
      - my_awesome_db

So I access pgAdmin on my localhost:15432 (just because it's easy to remember), and I've configured pgAdmin with:

Host: my_awesome_db
Port: 5432
Username: postgres

For me worked like this:

Add Server -> Connection -> Hostname/address

Set field to 172.17.0.1

More info at Docker Network doc: https://docs.docker.com/network/network-tutorial-standalone

first you need to get container information

$docker ps

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                         NAMES
0b00555238ba        dpage/pgadmin4      "/entrypoint.sh"         43 minutes ago      Up 43 minutes       0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, 443/tcp   pedantic_turing
e79fb6440a95        postgres            "docker-entrypoint.s…"   About an hour ago   Up About an hour    0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp        pg-docker

then extract IP Address

$sudo docker inspect e79fb6440a95 | grep IPAddress

            "SecondaryIPAddresses": null,
            "IPAddress": "",
                    "IPAddress": "192.168.64.2",

And when you create your server put your IP Address

You just need to specify in your connection string the, server parameter, the name of your container name and not the localhost or 127.0.0.1

My pgAdmin runs on the docker host (osx). In docker-compose.yml I had to set

ports:
  - 5432:5432

explicit. This line was not there before. But this oneliner did the trick.

Here's my example:

version: '3.9'

services:

  db:
    image: postgres
    restart: always
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: mysecret
      POSTGRES_USER: myuser
      POSTGRES_DB: mydb
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    ...
    ...

After that, I can connect to "localhost" with pgadmin. And it is save if you restart your container! You don't need to search for the ipaddress with docker inspect

If you don't do this, your docker will not have a HostIp "0.0.0.0" but only a tcp 5432 connection.

Background information:

1. Check your running docker container docker ps
2. Get the name of your pgsql and do docker inspect name_of_container_here
3. Find the row "Ports:

Before change the docker-compose.yml the docker-inspect ... will show the "Ports" 5432/tcp is null:

...
"Ports": {
    "5432/tcp": null
},
...

After changing the docker-compose.yml, docker inspect ... will show you the following, where you now can see "HostIp": "0.0.0.0", aso ...

...
"Ports": {
    "5432/tcp": [
        {
           "HostIp": "0.0.0.0",
           "HostPort": "5432"
        }
    ]
},
...

Because I was connecting to a server on the host, it was as simple as adding

--net host

to the docker run command, so that the container gets access to the host's ports.

For me bringing up the containers via docker-compose did the trick, before I tried to do it by starting 2 postgres and pgadmin separately and things didn't work. Will leave here the docker-compose.yml that worked for me:

version: '3.8'

services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres
    container_name: postgres
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  pgadmin:
    image: dpage/pgadmin4
    container_name: pgadmin
    environment:
      PGADMIN_DEFAULT_EMAIL: [email protected]
      PGADMIN_DEFAULT_PASSWORD: password
    ports:
      - "82:80"
    depends_on:
      - postgres

volumes:
  pgdata:

In my case, I am connecting in pgadmin 4 by setting Host as localhost!

docker-compose.yml:

timesheets.db:
  image: postgres:latest
  container_name: timesheets.db
  environment: 
    - POSTGRES_DB=timesheets
    - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
    - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres
  volumes:
    - ./.containers/timesheets-db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
  hostname: timesheets.db
  ports:
    - 5432:5432

it worked for me too, I used localhost as hostname