Subdomains, Nginx-proxy and Docker-compose

Question

I'm looking for a way to configure Nginx to access hosted services through a subdomain of my server. Those services and Nginx are instantiated with Docker-compose.

In short, when typing jenkins.192.168.1.2, I should access to Jenkins hosted on 192.168.1.2 redirected with Nginx proxy.

A quick look of what I currently have. It doesn't work without a top domain name, so it works fine on play-with-docker.com, but not locally with for example 192.168.1.2.

server {
    server_name jenkins.REVERSE_PROXY_DOMAIN_NAME;
        location / {
            proxy_pass http://jenkins:8080;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host:$server_port;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      }
}

To have a look of what I want: https://github.com/Ivaprag/devtools-compose

My overall goal is to access remote docker containers without modifying clients' DNS service.

Answer 1

If you are already using docker-compose I recommend using the jwilder nginx-proxy container.

https://github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy

This allows you to add unlimited number of web service containers to the backend of the defined nginx proxy, for example:

nginx-proxy:
  image: jwilder/nginx-proxy
  ports:
    - "80:80"
    - "443:443"
  volumes:
    - "/etc/nginx/vhost.d"
    - "/usr/share/nginx/html"
    - "/var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro"
    - "nginx_certs:/etc/nginx/certs:rw"
nginx:
  build:
   context: ./docker/nginx/
   dockerfile: Dockerfile
  volumes_from:
     - data
  environment:
     VIRTUAL_HOST: www.host1.com
nginx_2:
  build:
   context: ./docker/nginx_2/
   dockerfile: Dockerfile
  volumes_from:
     - data
  environment:
     VIRTUAL_HOST: www.host2.com
apache_1:
  build:
   context: ./docker/apache_1/
   dockerfile: Dockerfile
  volumes_from:
     - data
  environment:
     VIRTUAL_HOST: www.host3.com

The nginx-proxy mount the host docker sock file in order to get information about the other containers running, if any of them have the env variable VIRTUAL_HOST set then it will add it to its configuration.

Answer 2

Unfortunately nginx doesn't support sub-domains on IP addresses like that.

You would either have to modify the clients hosts file (which you said you didn't want to do)...

---

Or you can just set your nginx to redirect like so:

location /jenkins {
    proxy_pass http://jenkins:8080;
    ...
}

location /other-container {
    proxy_pass http://other-container:8080;
}

which would allow you to access jenkins at 192.168.1.2/jenkins

---

Or you can try and serve your different containers through different ports. E.g:

server {
    listen 8081;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://jenkins:8080;
        ...
    }
}

server {
    listen 8082;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://other-container:8080;
        ...
    }
}

And then access jenkins from 192.168.1.2:8081/