How to tell docker to use host dns configuration?

if you are using docker-compose you need to add dns section onto your service definition in yaml file. If you running docker directly for command line you may use --dns=IP_ADDRESS... argument for defining your company nameserver.

more details in documentation here: https://docs.docker.com/v17.09/engine/userguide/networking/default_network/configure-dns/

The 127.0.0.11 entry inside the container is expected even when you override DNS on the container. This points back to the loopback interface inside the container which has a mapping for port 53 to go back to the docker engine for DNS resolution. You need docker to do the DNS resolution to give you container to container networking with DNS for discovery.

You should still see the docker engine call out to your DNS server even with the 127.0.0.11 entry inside the container, so it's not a bug, or lack of configurability, you just don't see this configuration from inside the container.

We'd need more details on the actual issue you are encountering, but one possible problem I've seen from this before is DNS not resolving external hosts without a fully qualified name in some specific scenarios. You can read about that in this issue/thread here: https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/32093