Dockerfile for NGINX Web server - nginx

Question

I have been trying to set up a local docker container that would host NGINX server. To start with, here is my Dockerfile:
# Set nginx base image
FROM nginx
# File Author / Maintainer
MAINTAINER myuser "myemail#mydomain.com"
# Copy custom configuration file from the current directory
COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
I did build this file using the docker build command and when I listed the images, I get to see this image in the list.
Now, I tried to run this newly created image which resulted in an error:
my-MacBook-Pro:nginx-docker me$ docker images
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
myrepo nginx-latest 0d73419e8da9 12 minutes ago 182.8 MB
hello-world latest c54a2cc56cbb 13 days ago 1.848 kB
nginx latest 0d409d33b27e 6 weeks ago 182.8 MB
my-MacBook-Pro:nginx-docker me$ docker run -it myrepo:nginx-latest
2016/07/15 07:07:35 [emerg] 1#1: open() "/etc/nginx/logs/access.log" failed (2: No such file or directory)
nginx: [emerg] open() "/etc/nginx/logs/access.log" failed (2: No such file or directory)
The path to the log file is configured in my nginx.conf which is as below:
#user nobody;
worker_processes 1;
#error_log logs/error.log;
#error_log logs/error.log notice;
#error_log logs/error.log info;
#pid logs/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
access_log logs/access.log main;
sendfile on;
#tcp_nopush on;
#keepalive_timeout 0;
keepalive_timeout 65;
#gzip on;
server {
listen 8080;
server_name localhost;
root /Users/me/Projects/Sandbox/my-app;
#charset koi8-r;
access_log logs/host.access.log main;
#
# Wide-open CORS config for nginx
#
location / {
add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,X-CustomHeader,Keep-Alive,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type';
}
# /api will server your proxied API that is running on same machine different port
# or another machine. So you can protect your API endpoint not get hit by public directly
location /api {
proxy_pass http://localhost:9000;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
proxy_set_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin $http_origin;
}
error_page 404 /404.html;
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
#
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root html;
}
# deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
# concurs with nginx's one
#
#location ~ /\.ht {
# deny all;
#}
}
include servers/*;
}
When I now tried to run this NGINX image, I get the following error:
2016/07/15 07:07:35 [emerg] 1#1: open() "/etc/nginx/logs/access.log" failed (2: No such file or directory)
nginx: [emerg] open() "/etc/nginx/logs/access.log" failed (2: No such file or directory)
What should I do to fix this? Also what and where should that path be? I suppose it is on the underlying OS path that is exposed by Docker?

Answer 1

The base image in your Dockerfile is nginx (nginx:latest to be exact). It has a pre-configured nginx configuration that comes from Debian Nginx package. You may inspect the container yourself: docker run -it --rm nginx /bin/bash and look at the files and directories to learn few facts about it:
it provides nginx user
it provides /var/log/nginx directory, but root owns it
it provides access.log and error.log in that directory writable by anyone
(Dockerfile for the base Nginx image is here)
Your configuration:
runs Nginx as nginx (it's the default)
tries to write log files into /etc/nginx/logs
Apparently, this directory does not exist because no one has created it. If it'd existed it should be writable by nginx user.