`network-node` cannot restart after VM restart: "Address already in use" is an IP conflict on static 172.27.0.3, not a port conflict

[SirsiMaster]

Description

After any VM/daemon restart (colima restart, Docker Desktop restart, host reboot), network-node fails to start with:

Error response from daemon: failed to set up container networking: Address already in use

The message reads like a port conflict, but nothing is listening on 50211/50212/9999 — it is an IP conflict. network-node reserves the static address 172.27.0.3:

IPAMConfig: {"IPv4Address": "172.27.0.3"}

172.27.0.3 sits inside the range Docker allocates dynamically, and network-node has restart: no while its siblings have unless-stopped. So on restart the siblings come up first and one of them takes .3, leaving the node unable to bind its reserved address.

Confirmed it is a race, not one misbehaving container — three different squatters across three restarts: json-rpc-relay, then json-rpc-relay-ws, then mirror-node-monitor.

Steps to reproduce

1. hedera start -d
2. Restart the Docker VM (colima restart, or restart Docker Desktop)
3. docker start network-node → Address already in use
4. docker network inspect hedera-network-node --format '{{range .Containers}}{{.Name}} {{.IPv4Address}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}' | grep '0\.3/' → some other container holds it

Expected behavior

Either assign static IPs to every service in the network (so none can be handed out dynamically), or place the reserved addresses outside the dynamic allocation range (ipam.config.ip_range), or give network-node a restart policy so it participates in the same startup wave.

Workaround

squatter=$(docker network inspect hedera-network-node \
  --format '{{range .Containers}}{{.Name}} {{.IPv4Address}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}' \
  | awk '$2 ~ /^172\.27\.0\.3\// {print $1}')
docker stop "$squatter" && docker start network-node && docker start "$squatter"

Then wait for swirlds.log to reach newStatus":"ACTIVE" — the container being Up is not sufficient (see #1391).

Environment

• @hashgraph/hedera-local 2.40.2, macOS 26.5 (Apple Silicon), colima 0.10.1