Advanced Configuration

Running processes as a user/group

By default, the services (nginx etc) will run as root user inside the docker container. You can change this behaviour by setting the following environment variables. Not only will they run the services as this user/group, they will change the ownership on the data and letsencrypt folders at startup.

services:
  app:
    image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
    environment:
      PUID: 1000
      PGID: 1000
    # ...

This may have the side effect of a failed container start due to permission denied trying to open port 80 on some systems. The only course to fix that is to remove the variables and run as the default root user.

Best Practice: Use a Docker network

For those who have a few of their upstream services running in Docker on the same Docker host as NPM, here's a trick to secure things a bit better. By creating a custom Docker network, you don't need to publish ports for your upstream services to all of the Docker host's interfaces.

Create a network, ie "scoobydoo":

docker network create scoobydoo

Then add the following to the docker-compose.yml file for both NPM and any other services running on this Docker host:

networks:
  default:
    external: true
    name: scoobydoo

Let's look at a Portainer example:

version: '3.8'
services:

  portainer:
    image: portainer/portainer
    privileged: true
    volumes:
      - './data:/data'
      - '/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock'
    restart: unless-stopped

networks:
  default:
    external: true
    name: scoobydoo

Now in the NPM UI you can create a proxy host with portainer as the hostname, and port 9000 as the port. Even though this port isn't listed in the docker-compose file, it's "exposed" by the Portainer Docker image for you and not available on the Docker host outside of this Docker network. The service name is used as the hostname, so make sure your service names are unique when using the same network.

Docker Healthcheck

The Dockerfile that builds this project does not include a HEALTHCHECK but you can opt in to this feature by adding the following to the service in your docker-compose.yml file:

healthcheck:
  test: ["CMD", "/usr/bin/check-health"]
  interval: 10s
  timeout: 3s

Docker File Secrets

This image supports the use of Docker secrets to import from files and keep sensitive usernames or passwords from being passed or preserved in plaintext.

You can set any environment variable from a file by appending __FILE (double-underscore FILE) to the environmental variable name.

version: '3.8'

secrets:
  # Secrets are single-line text files where the sole content is the secret
  # Paths in this example assume that secrets are kept in local folder called ".secrets"
  DB_ROOT_PWD:
    file: .secrets/db_root_pwd.txt
  MYSQL_PWD:
    file: .secrets/mysql_pwd.txt

services:
  app:
    image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      # Public HTTP Port:
      - '80:80'
      # Public HTTPS Port:
      - '443:443'
      # Admin Web Port:
      - '81:81'
    environment:
      # These are the settings to access your db
      DB_MYSQL_HOST: "db"
      DB_MYSQL_PORT: 3306
      DB_MYSQL_USER: "npm"
      # DB_MYSQL_PASSWORD: "npm"  # use secret instead
      DB_MYSQL_PASSWORD__FILE: /run/secrets/MYSQL_PWD
      DB_MYSQL_NAME: "npm"
      # If you would rather use Sqlite, remove all DB_MYSQL_* lines above
      # Uncomment this if IPv6 is not enabled on your host
      # DISABLE_IPV6: 'true'
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt
    secrets:
      - MYSQL_PWD
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: jc21/mariadb-aria
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      # MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: "npm"  # use secret instead
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD__FILE: /run/secrets/DB_ROOT_PWD
      MYSQL_DATABASE: "npm"
      MYSQL_USER: "npm"
      # MYSQL_PASSWORD: "npm"  # use secret instead
      MYSQL_PASSWORD__FILE: /run/secrets/MYSQL_PWD
      MARIADB_AUTO_UPGRADE: '1'
    volumes:
      - ./mysql:/var/lib/mysql
    secrets:
      - DB_ROOT_PWD
      - MYSQL_PWD

Disabling IPv6

On some Docker hosts IPv6 may not be enabled. In these cases, the following message may be seen in the log:

Address family not supported by protocol

The easy fix is to add a Docker environment variable to the Nginx Proxy Manager stack:

    environment:
      DISABLE_IPV6: 'true'

Custom Nginx Configurations

If you are a more advanced user, you might be itching for extra Nginx customizability.

NPM has the ability to include different custom configuration snippets in different places.

You can add your custom configuration snippet files at /data/nginx/custom as follow:

• /data/nginx/custom/root_top.conf: Included at the top of nginx.conf
• /data/nginx/custom/root.conf: Included at the very end of nginx.conf
• /data/nginx/custom/http_top.conf: Included at the top of the main http block
• /data/nginx/custom/http.conf: Included at the end of the main http block
• /data/nginx/custom/events.conf: Included at the end of the events block
• /data/nginx/custom/stream.conf: Included at the end of the main stream block
• /data/nginx/custom/server_proxy.conf: Included at the end of every proxy server block
• /data/nginx/custom/server_redirect.conf: Included at the end of every redirection server block
• /data/nginx/custom/server_stream.conf: Included at the end of every stream server block
• /data/nginx/custom/server_stream_tcp.conf: Included at the end of every TCP stream server block
• /data/nginx/custom/server_stream_udp.conf: Included at the end of every UDP stream server block

Every file is optional.

X-FRAME-OPTIONS Header

You can configure the X-FRAME-OPTIONS header value by specifying it as a Docker environment variable. The default if not specified is deny.

  ...
  environment:
    X_FRAME_OPTIONS: "sameorigin"
  ...

Customising logrotate settings

By default, NPM rotates the access- and error logs weekly and keeps 4 and 10 log files respectively. Depending on the usage, this can lead to large log files, especially access logs. You can customise the logrotate configuration through a mount (if your custom config is logrotate.custom):

  volumes:
    ...
    - ./logrotate.custom:/etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager

For reference, the default configuration can be found here.

Enabling the geoip2 module

To enable the geoip2 module, you can create the custom configuration file /data/nginx/custom/root_top.conf and include the following snippet:

load_module /usr/lib/nginx/modules/ngx_http_geoip2_module.so;
load_module /usr/lib/nginx/modules/ngx_stream_geoip2_module.so;