How to change nginx's default homepage via a Dockerfile and then launch it by running a container

Question

I have a very simple HTML file which outputs 'Container with HTML file'.

I have this Dockerfile where I copy my welcome.html (my simple HTML page):

FROM nginx:latest
WORKDIR /usr/share/nginx/html
COPY welcome.html welcome.html

Then I create an image in the directory containing this HTML page:

docker image build -t html_nginx .

and run a container using:

docker container run -p 80:80 --rm html_nginx

But when the container is run on port 80, I get the default 'Welcome Page' of nginx and not my desired output from the HTML file ('Container with HTML file').

How much ever I try, I have never been able to get my message printed on the browser.

Can someone please point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

The default nginx config will load the index.html file from the /usr/share/nginx/html directory.

This default is set in /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf with the lines

location / {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
        index  index.html index.htm;
}

So to fix this you can copy welcome.html into the /usr/share/nginx/html directory as index.html, or change the above index line to reference welcome.html and reload. To make this change more permanent you would likely want to create a dockerfile that defines a docker image overriding the config copied in where you have already set this value.

Alternatively you should just be able to access /welcome.html when hitting your server e.g. http://localhost:80/welcome.html