Docker Networking - nginx: [emerg] host not found in upstream

Question

I have recently started migrating to Docker 1.9 and Docker-Compose 1.5's networking features to replace using links.

So far with links there were no problems with nginx connecting to my php5-fpm fastcgi server located in a different server in one group via docker-compose. Newly though when I run docker-compose --x-networking up my php-fpm, mongo and nginx containers boot up, however nginx quits straight away with [emerg] 1#1: host not found in upstream "waapi_php_1" in /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf:16

However, if I run the docker-compose command again while the php and mongo containers are running (nginx exited), nginx starts and works fine from then on.

This is my docker-compose.yml file:

nginx:
  image: nginx
  ports:
    - "42080:80"
  volumes:
    - ./config/docker/nginx/default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf:ro

php:
  build: config/docker/php
  ports:
    - "42022:22"
  volumes:
    - .:/var/www/html
  env_file: config/docker/php/.env.development

mongo:
  image: mongo
  ports:
    - "42017:27017"
  volumes:
    - /var/mongodata/wa-api:/data/db
  command: --smallfiles

This is my default.conf for nginx:

server {
    listen  80;

    root /var/www/test;

    error_log /dev/stdout debug;
    access_log /dev/stdout;

    location / {
        # try to serve file directly, fallback to app.php
        try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/.+\.php(/|$) {
        # Referencing the php service host (Docker)
        fastcgi_pass waapi_php_1:9000;

        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
        include fastcgi_params;

        # We must reference the document_root of the external server ourselves here.
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/html/public$fastcgi_script_name;

        fastcgi_param HTTPS off;
    }
}

How can I get nginx to work with only a single docker-compose call?

Answer 1

This can be solved with the mentioned depends_on directive since it's implemented now (2016):

version: '2'
  services:
    nginx:
      image: nginx
      ports:
        - "42080:80"
      volumes:
        - ./config/docker/nginx/default.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf:ro
      depends_on:
        - php

    php:
      build: config/docker/php
      ports:
        - "42022:22"
      volumes:
        - .:/var/www/html
      env_file: config/docker/php/.env.development
      depends_on:
        - mongo

    mongo:
      image: mongo
      ports:
        - "42017:27017"
      volumes:
        - /var/mongodata/wa-api:/data/db
      command: --smallfiles

Successfully tested with:

$ docker-compose version
docker-compose version 1.8.0, build f3628c7

Find more details in the documentation.

There is also a very interesting article dedicated to this topic: Controlling startup order in Compose