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Running Nginx in Docker

Let's see our Nginx Docker config in action.

Initial situation​

  • No Docker Containers running
  • No Docker Images
  • You have a Terminal Session in the Proxyserver directory
  • Docker Network already started
$ ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   4 bert  staff  128 Nov 21 13:40 .
drwxr-xr-x  12 bert  staff  384 Nov 20 10:26 ..
drwxr-xr-x   5 bert  staff  160 Nov 21 12:57 deployment
-rw-r--r--   1 bert  staff  547 Nov 21 12:56 docker-compose.yml

$ docker images
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID   CREATED   SIZE

$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE     COMMAND   CREATED   STATUS    PORTS     NAMES

Starting Docker-compose​

$ docker-compose up

The terminal will be locked because we run this without the "-d" option (for 'Detach') This command results in the following output:

$ docker-compose up
Pulling proxyserver (nginx:1.21.4)...
1.21.4: Pulling from library/nginx
eff15d958d66: Pull complete
1e5351450a59: Pull complete
2df63e6ce2be: Pull complete
9171c7ae368c: Pull complete
020f975acd28: Pull complete
266f639b35ad: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:097c3a0913d7e3a5b01b6c685a60c03632fc7a2b50bc8e35bcaa3691d788226e
Status: Downloaded newer image for nginx:1.21.4
Creating proxyserver ... done
Attaching to proxyserver
proxyserver    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: /docker-entrypoint.d/ is not empty, will attempt to perform configuration
proxyserver    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Looking for shell scripts in /docker-entrypoint.d/
proxyserver    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh
proxyserver    | 10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh: info: can not modify /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf (read-only file system?)
proxyserver    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/20-envsubst-on-templates.sh
proxyserver    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/30-tune-worker-processes.sh
proxyserver    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Configuration complete; ready for start up

And on another terminal window the Docker commands show a running Container:

$ docker images
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED      SIZE
nginx        1.21.4    ea335eea17ab   4 days ago   141MB

$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE          COMMAND                  CREATED              STATUS              PORTS                               NAMES
b78ac1eb5c5e   nginx:1.21.4   "/docker-entrypoint.…"   About a minute ago   Up About a minute   0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, :::80->80/tcp   proxyserver

Testing the ProxyServer​

The Container itself is listening on Port 80, and it is mapped to port 80 on the Host.

Start a browser and go to http://127.0.0.1/ (default port is 80) A running Nginx in Docker

So, what do we have so far:​

  • A Nginx Proxyserver running in a Docker Container.

  • The Nginx configuration does not do any proxy'ing yet, all requests are going to the catch-all empty website.

    Next section of this tutorial will fix that.