Running nginx

Build Environment
1

Is it possible to spin up an nginx server through circleci? I’ve tried unsuccessfully to add docker - image: nginx to the config.yml, but this doesn’t seem to actually install nginx.

2

Not done it, but I’m sure it is - my Apache, custom HTTP listeners and web socket listeners all work fine inside CircleCI. Have you got NginX working locally in a Docker container, or are you wanting to use a pre-build image?

Let’s see your whole config.yml please, perhaps there’s a mistake.

3

Yes I have a local Docker container with nginx going. I’m in the process of trying to use apt-get install nginx, from a custom Docker file.

This is what my config looked like at earlier tries:

version: 2
jobs:
  build:
    docker:
      - image: nginx

working_directory: ~/repo

steps:
  - checkout
  - run: echo $PATH
  - run: nginx
  - run: nginx -v
4

Ah, gotcha. It looks like you’ve got the container name correct. Maybe it’s worth trying the fully-qualified path, rather than just nginx?

5

I’m able to get this running with creating a new Docker image:

FROM circleci/node:latest
USER root
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install nginx
EXPOSE 80

For whatever reason using FROM nginx in the Docker file doesn’t work. It seems like I’m pulling down more than I need here… If anyone has an alternative approach I’d love to see it.

1 Like
6

@halfer - you mean you can just throw in https://hub.docker.com/_/nginx/ to the config.yml file?

7

No, but that page is the official docs for NginX on Docker Hub, so is a good source of info (e.g. what is the base name of the container).

8

@halfer Thanks for the help!

9

No worries. It’s odd that the basic container works for you locally and not on Circle. Are you perhaps adding some custom commands or env vars to your docker run command?

Personally, I would not worry about it too much - if the new one works, that’s great. Unless the new image is much larger than you would like, just stick with it. Most of my containers are under 100M, but I have one stubborn one that only works on Ubuntu, and that’s 500M+! I’ll fix it on a rainy day… :umbrella:

10

Yeah, I’m not doing anything custom. I try to start things off as simple as possible. As per your advice - image: nginx:stable works fine. It seems like defining a tag might be required (or it might be possible that by excluding a tag it was defaulting to the latest tag which could have been causing errors).

11

OK, great. I’d not only recommend using a fixed tag, but use a version-specific tag too. For maximum reproducibility, you don’t want stable to mean something different over time. Upgrade the tag manually in a controlled fashion instead.