Install Nginx Proxy Manager with Docker on Ubuntu

• Author
• Recent Posts

Hitesh Jethva

Hitesh is a technical writer and DevOps engineer with more than 15 years of experience in IT. He focuses on cloud computing, DevOps, Linux, Kubernetes, Docker, security, and databases.

Latest posts by Hitesh Jethva (see all)

• Ansible beginner tutorial - Wed, Nov 15 2023
• Nested Docker containers: Run Docker in a Docker container - Fri, Nov 10 2023
• Docker networking: Connect a Docker container - Fri, Oct 27 2023

In addition, the tool has an elegant interface based on Tabler that makes the configuration process user-friendly and fun. The open-source system was designed to make it easier for users to manage reverse proxying hosts with SSL termination.

NPM supports various features and carries several benefits that make it a top choice. In addition, it integrates with several platforms.

In this post, I will show you how to set up Nginx Proxy Manager with Docker on Ubuntu 22.04.

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 22.04 as your initial operating environment
• A non-root user with sudo privileges
• Docker Engine and Docker Compose packages are installed and running
• A valid domain name for Nginx Proxy Manager (npm.linuxbuz.com in this tutorial).

Verifying Docker and Docker Compose installation

Since we are going to install Nginx Proxy Manager with Docker, we must have the latest version of Docker and Docker Compose installed. First, enter the following command in your command line interface to verify the Docker installation:

docker --version

If Docker is already installed, you should get something like:

Docker version 20.10.16, build aa7e414

To verify the Docker Compose installation, run the command below:

docker-compose version

If Docker Compose is already installed, you should get something like:

Docker Compose version v2.6.0

Creating a Docker Compose configuration file

Docker Compose uses a docker-compose.yml file to define the service definitions for setting up an application inside the container. Docker Compose allows users to define multiple services for multi-container applications and link them with shared networks.

Let's start by creating a directory for Nginx Proxy Manager. For this tutorial, we will create an nginx-proxy directory. Type the following command to create a directory and navigate into it:

mkdir ~/nginx-proxy
cd ~/nginx-proxy

Next, create a directory to hold Let's Encrypt SSL and database:

mkdir data 
mkdir ssl

Next, let's create a docker-compose.yml file to define different services to deploy Nginx Proxy Manager:

nano docker-compose.yml

Add the following configurations to the file to define all required services:

version: "3"
services:
  app:
    image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      # These ports are in format <host-port>:<container-port>
      - '80:80' # Public HTTP Port
      - '443:443' # Public HTTPS Port
      - '81:81' # Admin Web Port
    environment:
      DB_MYSQL_HOST: "db"
      DB_MYSQL_PORT: 3306
      DB_MYSQL_USER: "npm"
      DB_MYSQL_PASSWORD: "npm"
      DB_MYSQL_NAME: "npm"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./ssl:/etc/letsencrypt
      - ./config.json:/app/config/production.json
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: 'jc21/mariadb-aria:latest'
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'npm'
      MYSQL_DATABASE: 'npm'
      MYSQL_USER: 'npm'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'npm'
    volumes:
      - ./data/mysql:/var/lib/mysql

Here's a brief explanation of each service definition:

• The first line in a file is the version definition line. You can define your preferred version in this line.
• app: Defines the service definition name of the Nginx Proxy Manager.
• image: Specifies the name of the Nginx Proxy Manager and MariaDB image.
• restart: Specifies the restart behavior of the container.
• ports: Specifies the port numbers on which you want to expose your application.
• environment: Specifies the environment variables that hold the database credentials.
• volumes: Defines the mount locations for MySQL data, Let's Encrypt SSL, and the config.json file on the container. Volumes allow us to share application code and data with other containers.
• depends_on: Specifies the dependent container. In this case, the app container depends on the db container.
• db: Provides the service definition name of the database.

Defining environment variables

Environment variables are very important for communications between the Nginx Proxy Manager container and the database container. Environment variables hold the database host, name, password, and port information.

In this tutorial, we define the database credentials in the config.json file. Let's create a config.json file inside the nginx-proxy directory:

nano config.json

Add the following configurations:

{
  "database": {
    "engine": "mysql",
    "host": "db",
    "name": "npm",
    "user": "npm",
    "password": "npm",
    "port": 3306
  }
}

When you finish, save and close the file.

Starting the container

Docker Compose allows us to start all the services we specified in the docker-compose.yml file with just one command: docker-compose up.

Let's start all the containers and make them run in the background using the -d flag:

docker-compose up -d

You should see the following output after starting up all the containers:

[+] Running 3/3
 ⠿ Network nginx-proxy_proxy-internal  Created                                                                                           0.1s
 ⠿ Container proxy-db                  Started                                                                                           1.3s
 ⠿ Container proxy-app                 Started                                                                                           1.3s

To verify the status of all running containers, run the docker-compose ps command:

docker-compose ps

You should see the list of all running containers in the following output:

nginx-proxy-app-1   "/init"             app                 running             0.0.0.0:80-81->80-81/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp, :::80-81->80-81/tcp, :::443->443/tcp
nginx-proxy-db-1    "/scripts/run.sh"   db                  running             3306/tcp

If something goes wrong, you can check the logs for each container using the docker logs command and specify the service name. For example, to check the log of the Nginx Proxy Manager container, run the following command:

docker logs nginx-proxy-app-1

Setting up Nginx Proxy Manager

At this point, Nginx Proxy Manager is installed and running on ports 80 and 81. Now, open your web browser, and access the URL http://your-server-ip to verify the Nginx Proxy Manager. If everything is okay, you should see the Nginx Proxy Manager default page:

Verifying Nginx Proxy Manager

Next, access the Nginx Proxy Manager admin interface using the URL http://your-server-ip:81 in your web browser. You will be redirected to the Nginx Proxy Manager sign-in page:

Showing the user setup screen

Provide the following default credentials to log in:

Email address: admin@exampl.com

Password: changeme

Then, click the Sign in button. Once you have logged in successfully, you should see the user setup screen:

Showing the password reset screen

Change your default username and email, and click Save. You should see the password reset screen:

Showing the password reset screen

Change your default password, and click Save. You should see the Nginx Proxy Manager dashboard screen:

Showing Nginx Proxy Manager dashboard

Configuring domain name and SSL

At this point, Nginx Proxy Manager is configured with a public IP address. We recommend setting a domain for accessing Nginx Proxy Manager.

On the Nginx Proxy Manager dashboard, click Hosts > Proxy Hosts to open the Proxy Hosts:

Navigating to the Nginx Proxy Hosts

After that, click the Add Proxy Host button to create a new proxy host, as shown below:

Configuring Nginx Proxy Hosts

Define your domain name, public IP, and port, and click the SSL tab:

Defining the SSL certificate

Under SSL Certificate, select Request a new SSL Certificate. Then enable Force SSL and HTTP/2 Support and click Save. You will see your added proxy hosts on the following screen:

Showing Nginx Proxy Hosts

You can now access the Nginx Proxy Manager using your domain name https://npm.linuxbuz.com/.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, I demonstrated how to set up Nginx Proxy Manager with Docker on Ubuntu 22.04. You can now start using the Nginx Proxy Manager to add a proxy host for another Docker container.