Question 85095 in Docker Question posted in
The official documentation can be found here.

How to configure a non dockerized nginx to serve static files from a docker container?

Description

I have installed NGINX on a ubuntu server. It works and i can run different websites with static files from the same server.
Installed docker now and build an image, pushed it to this ubuntu server and run it with docker. I can reach the site with static files when i call it server-ip:port.

Problem

I don’t know, how to say nginx where the static files are. Because they are inside the docker container.

Nginx conf

server {
        
        index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        server_name sub.domain.com www.sub.domain.com;
        
        root <------ what here?
        
        location / {
            proxy_pass http://localhost:7000;
        }

        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;

        add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
        add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";

        charset utf-8;

         # php fpm
         location ~ .php$ {
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            include fastcgi_params;
        }

        location = /robots.txt {
          allow all;
          log_not_found off;
          access_log off;
        }

        location = /favicon.ico {
          allow all;
          log_not_found off;
          access_log off;
        } 

        error_page 404 /404.html;
            location = /40x.html {
        }

        error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            location = /50x.html {
        }

        # basic cache control
        location ~* .(?:css(.map)?|js(.map)?|jpe?g|png|gif|ico|cur|heic|webp|tiff?|mp3|m4a|aac|ogg|midi?|wav|mp4|mov|webm|mpe?g|avi|ogv|flv|wmv)$ {
            expires 30d;
            add_header Cache-Control "public,max-age=31536000";
            access_log off;
        }

        # svg, fonts
        location ~* .(?:svgz?|ttf|ttc|otf|eot|woff2?)$ {
            expires 30d;
            add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*";
            add_header Cache-Control "public,max-age=31536000";
            access_log off;
        }

        # gzip
        gzip on;
        gzip_vary on;
        gzip_proxied any;
        gzip_comp_level 6;
        gzip_types text/plain text/css text/xml application/json application/javascript application/rss+xml application/atom+xml image/svg+xml;

}

Question

Can Nginx, which is installed on the server, not inside a docker container, serve the static files from the public folder inside Docker container?

Tags:

2

Answers


  1. Chosen as BEST ANSWER
    0

    I think the solution, i was looking for, is a mount.

    On the host i create a directory:

    path/to/hostdirectory

    Then i create a storage with docker

    docker volume create --driver local 
    --opt type=none 
    --opt device=path/to/hostdirectory 
    --opt o=bind 
    <volume-name>

    Then i run the image with this command:

    docker run -it -d -p 127.0.0.1:7000:7000 --name <containr-name> -v <volume-name>:path/inside/container <image-name>

    For a description of -it, -d and -p you can run docker run --help. I prefer to make the port of the image only locally available. Therefore i put the 127.0.0.1 in front of 7000:7000.

    Inside the nginx conf file it looks like this:
    root path/to/hostdirectory
    This way NGINX can serve static files from this folder for example.


  2. 0

    File inside a container are of course simply stored on the host filesystem, so you can make it work. Assuming that Docker is using the overlay2 storage driver (which is generally the case these days), you can get the path to the container root filesystem like this:

    $ docker inspect mycontainer -f '{{ .GraphDriver.Data.MergedDir }}'

    Which will output something like:

    /var/lib/docker/overlay2/ec046389c3a9e0cfb2a0ab2875ad8f660556fa086de9062f3231a0c6ea0a4e93/merged

    Just append the path inside the container to that path. For example, if you know the files in your container are at /var/www/htdocs, then you would need:

    root /var/lib/docker/overlay2/ec046389c3a9e0cfb2a0ab2875ad8f660556fa086de9062f3231a0c6ea0a4e93/merged/var/www/htdocs

    But there are a lot of reasons why this is a bad idea, among them:

    • This is fragile, because it depends on the storage driver your Docker daemon is using
    • The path is going to be different every time you start a new container
    • This won’t work if the files in which you are interested are stored on a Docker volume

    You are generally much better off if you treat your containers like a black box from the perspective of the host.

    Login or Signup to reply.
Please signup or login to give your own answer.

Back To Top
Search