Some help understanding (and some odd behaviour) for the nginx portion (newbie question)

[ryd04]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Hi,

I used the docker-compose with web-proxy method. The included qbittorrent worked. However, I have 2 questions:

1. Is this only useful for if you are outside your network? Or is it also useful for not having to use the port? E.g. http://host/[container] instead of host:[port] ?

2. With the provided docker-compose code with the web proxy, when I change the reference below I still get qbitorrent, but the formatting seems off (font is small), logo is huge on Chrome and I cannot log in. If I remove the “/qbit” everything works again and I’m not sure why.

3. Regarding the ports, if should I not be able to change what host port redirects in? Or does it not work because this is a web proxy? I noticed when I changed it the ports: -80:80 below to -79:80 I cannot get in (I realized this is no longer an http port but that’s how I thought the ports worked).

The docker-compose as copied from the main page, highlighting what I am talking about:
(I’m not sure why

web:
    image: dperson/nginx        # https://github.com/dperson/nginx
    links:                                                                                   
      - vpn:torrent                                                                          
    depends_on:                                                                              
      - torrent                                                                              
    tmpfs:                                                                                   
      - /run                                                                                 
      - /tmp                                                                                 
      - /var/cache/nginx                                                                     
    ports:                                                                                   
      - 80:80 (Question #3 refers to here)                                                                               
      - 443:443                                                                              
    command: -w "http://torrent:8080/;/qbit" (Question #2 referring to this)  

[yodapotatofly]

I would like explanations on this as well

[JohnCHarrington]

1. The reverse proxy is useful because all services running behind the vpn container are on an isolated network, you cannot access them from the host without the reverse proxy (or using the bridge method, also in the readme). The proxy has the extra advantages of letting you not have to worry about using different port numbers for different services, and letting you easily use subdomains (or /container as you have shown) to have nice URLs for your different services, all on a single IP. For instance in my home network I have a torrent client at torrent.home, a plex server at plex.home, and many other services. Because I also have a local DNS server (pihole, running in the same docker-compose file), I can easily access those urls from anywhere in the network. And because I have an openvpn server running too, I can be in that network from anywhere in the world!

2. Sorry, I don't use qbittorrent so I don't know about this one.

3. You should be able to change the ports, but of course you would then have to specify the port in the URL (e.g. http://host:79/[container]), because 80 is the default port for http.

[ryd04]

1. The reverse proxy is useful because all services running behind the vpn container are on an isolated network, you cannot access them from the host without the reverse proxy (or using the bridge method, also in the readme). The proxy has the extra advantages of letting you not have to worry about using different port numbers for different services, and letting you easily use subdomains (or /container as you have shown) to have nice URLs for your different services, all on a single IP. For instance in my home network I have a torrent client at torrent.home, a plex server at plex.home, and many other services. Because I also have a local DNS server (pihole, running in the same docker-compose file), I can easily access those urls from anywhere in the network. And because I have an openvpn server running too, I can be in that network from anywhere in the world!
2. Sorry, I don't use qbittorrent so I don't know about this one.
3. You should be able to change the ports, but of course you would then have to specify the port in the URL (e.g. http://host:79/[container]), because 80 is the default port for http.

Thanks so much for the reply and explanation! I had abandoned the reverse proxy because of lack of time and I was able to get everything else up and running. I had some time today and tried to get my setup to work; not remembering port numbers would be huge! Before the proxy I am doing http://192.168.2.x:9091 for transmission.. would be awesome to be able to do a 192.168.2.x/transmission . I believe that's how it works?

Anyhow, my problem now is that whatever I do.. the ONLY reverse proxy I can get is transmission. For example: 192.168.2.x/transmission WORKS, but 192.168.2.x/sonarr does NOT work.

Edit: I did some more testing, and if i comment all the of the other containers out and run only one such as:
command: -w "http://radarr:7878;/" - then i can get to Radarr at http://192.168.2.x
Changing it to: command: -w "http://radarr:7878;/radarr" however, does not. And I cannot get to http://192.168.2.x/radarr
Therefore, I can't have multiple services running in the proxy as i can only get to 1 it seems.

The moment I uncomment out the transmission container though http://192.168.2.x/transmission ALWAYS works.
I don't know why that container is different?

I'm suspecting there is a route somewhere but not sure how to change/check this.

Is there something I am doing wrong with the below that only transmission works? Pasting my docker-composefile below.

(edited to remove the other containers from the compose file... it was a long file that was trivial. This is the web part. All the containers are setup (sonarr, jackett, radarr, transmission) - and worked fine without the proxy. All I did to them before I added the below was remove the network_bridge,

web:
image: dperson/nginx
links:
- nordvpn:sonarr
- nordvpn:jackett
- nordvpn:radarr
- nordvpn:transmission
depends_on:
- nordvpn
tmpfs:
- /run
- /tmp
- /var/cache/nginx
ports:
- 80:80
- 443:443
command: -w "http://sonarr:8989;/sonarr"
command: -w "http://radarr:7878;/radarr"
command: -w "http://jackett:9117;/jackett"
command: -w "http://transmission:9091;/transmission"

[JohnCHarrington]

I'd recommend dropping the "command: -w ..." bits and writing a proper nginx configuration file and including it as I show below, that'll give you a lot more control:

   volumes:
      - reverse-proxy.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

In that file you'll be able to reference other containers by name exactly as you do in the commands, so you'd fill it in like this:

events {
  worker_connections  1024;  ## Default: 1024
}


http {
  server {
    server_name  #your_server_name_or_IP;

    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_read_timeout 90;

    location /sonarr {
      proxy_pass http://sonarr:8989;
    }
    location /transmission {
      proxy_pass http://transmission:9091;
    }
    ...etc
  }
}

[ryd04]

Thanks a bunch. That helped a lot and solved frustration! Fiddled with some base URL's and solved some issues.

However, I'm having a 502 bad gateway after a few minutes. When I go to docker ps, i sometimes notice the nginx is listed as unhealthy. Othertimes its listed as still starting. Quite strange... but I guess that is out of scope of the container lol. Possibly something else?

[bubuntux]

i added a few docker-compose examples using traefik i would recommend it over nginx