d-nginx-subdomains

This repo contains docker containers and a docker compose file for running an nginx web server for subdomain one-pagers.

The services are just:

• nginx

This is also intended to be reverse proxied by another frontend nginx server, so this one-container pod will bind to a VPN IP address and establish (unecrypted) HTTP connections over the (encrypted) VPN connection.

Pretty simple, right?

Networking

The setup for this one-container docker pod is to have an nginx container bound to all addresses inside the container (see nginx.conf selection below) and then bind that port inside the container to a specific IP and port on the host (see docker-compose selection below).

The nginx configuration file contains a listen directive that binds nginx to all addresses inside the container:

server {
    listen *:7777;

Meanwhile, in the docker-compose.yml file, we bind the container's port 7777 to the host's port 7777, but only on a private IP address:

servies:
  stormy_nginx_subs:
    ...
    ports:
      - "10.5.0.2:7777:7777"

Config files

All *.conf files in the conf.d/ directory will be picked up by nginx.

The config files must be named *.conf.

Volumes

No data volumes are used.

• nginx static content is a bind-mounted host directory
• lets encrypt generates site certs, which will be bind-mounted into host directory

Here is the volumes directive in docker-compose.yml:

    volumes:
      - "./conf.d:/etc/nginx/conf.d"
      - "/www/pages.charlesreid1.com/htdocs:/www/pages.charlesreid1.com/htdocs:ro"
      - "/www/hooks.charlesreid1.com/htdocs:/www/hooks.charlesreid1.com/htdocs:ro"
      - "/www/bots.charlesreid1.com/htdocs:/www/bots.charlesreid1.com/htdocs:ro"

The first line sets the nginx config files, the rest set the static content locations.

Backups

Site content comes from git.charlesreid1.com, nothing to back up.

Workflow

Static Content Directory Layout

Directories with static content are bind-mounted read-only into the container. To update the content being served, just update the content directory on the host.

(This enables you to use version control to track the live site contents.)

The section below covers how accomplish this layout. You should have your web content laid out as follows on the host:

/www
    example.com/
        htdocs/
            index.html
            ...
        example.com-src/
            README.md
            pelican/
            ...
        git/
            <contents of .git dir>
            ...

    example2.com/
        htdocs/
            ...
        example2.com-src/
            ...
        git/
            ...

In the container, you will have a mirrored directory structure, but only htdocs:

/www
    example.com/
        htdocs/
            index.html
            ...

    example2.com/
        htdocs/
            ...

Deploying Static Content with Git

You can use git to deploy static content, but take care not to put your .git directory into the live web directory.

git clone \
  --separate-git-dir=/www/example.com/git \
  -b gh-pages \
  <url-of-static-site> \
  /www/example.com/htdocs

Let's walk through that:

• Clone command to deploy content fresh
• Separate git dir to keep git from being live
• Branch gh-pages (we decided to match Github's convention)
• Url of static site from git.charlesreid1.com
• The path of the final cloned repo (bind mounted into container)

See scripts for details.

Updating Static Content with Git

git \
    --git-dir=/www/example.com/git \
    --work-tree=/www/example.com/htdocs/reponame \
    pull origin gh-pages