NGINX

Nginx, slim and distroless to be used behind a reverse proxy or as full version

MAIN TAGS 🏷️

These are the main tags for the image. There is also a tag for each commit and its shorthand sha256 value.

• 1.28.0
• stable
• latest

REPOSITORIES ☁️

docker pull 11notes/nginx:1.28.0
docker pull ghcr.io/11notes/nginx:1.28.0
docker pull quay.io/11notes/nginx:1.28.0

SYNOPSIS 📖

What can I do with this? This image will serve as a base for nginx related images that need a high-performance webserver. The default tag of this image is stripped for most functions that can be used by a reverse proxy in front of nginx, it adds however important webserver functions like brotli compression. The default tag is not meant to run as a reverse proxy, use the full image for that. The default tag does not support HTTPS for instance!

UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION 💶

Why should I run this image and not the other image(s) that already exist? Good question! All the other images on the market that do exactly the same don’t do or offer these options:

Important

• This image runs as 1000:1000 by default, most other images run everything as root
• This image has no shell since it is 100% distroless, most other images run on a distro like Debian or Alpine with full shell access (security)
• This image does not ship with any critical or high rated CVE and is automatically maintained via CI/CD, most other images mostly have no CVE scanning or code quality tools in place
• This image is created via a secure, pinned CI/CD process and immune to upstream attacks, most other images have upstream dependencies that can be exploited
• This image contains a proper health check that verifies the app is actually working, most other images have either no health check or only check if a port is open or ping works
• This image works as read-only, most other images need to write files to the image filesystem
• This image is a lot smaller than most other images

If you value security, simplicity and the ability to interact with the maintainer and developer of an image. Using my images is a great start in that direction.

COMPARISON 🏁

Below you find a comparison between this image and the most used one.

image	11notes/nginx:1.28.0	nginx:1.28.0-alpine-slim
image size on disk	4.4MB	11.9MB
process UID/GID	1000/1000	0:0
distroless?	✅	❌

DEFAULT CONFIG 📑

worker_processes auto;
worker_cpu_affinity auto;
worker_rlimit_nofile 204800;
error_log /nginx/log/error.log warn;
daemon off;

events {
  worker_connections 1024;
  use epoll;
  multi_accept on;
}

http {
  log_format main escape=json '{"log":"main","time":"$time_iso8601","server":{"name":"$server_name", "protocol":"$server_protocol"}, "client":{"ip":"$remote_addr", "x-forwarded-for":"$http_x_forwarded_for", "user":"$remote_user"},"request":{"method":"$request_method", "url":"$request_uri", "time":"$request_time", "status":$status}}';
  log_format proxy escape=json '{"log":"proxy", "time":"$time_iso8601","server":{"name":"$server_name", "protocol":"$server_protocol"}}, "client":{"ip":"$remote_addr", "x-forwarded-for":"$http_x_forwarded_for", "user":"$remote_user"},"request":{"method":"$request_method", "url":"$request_uri", "time":"$request_time", "status":$status}, "proxy":{"host":"$upstream_addr", "time":{"connect":"$upstream_connect_time", "response":"$upstream_response_time", "header":"$upstream_header_time"}, "io":{"bytes":{"sent":"$upstream_bytes_sent", "received":"$upstream_bytes_received"}}, "cache":"$upstream_cache_status", "status":"$upstream_status"}}';

  access_log off;
  server_tokens off;

  include mime.types;
  default_type application/octet-stream;

  sendfile on;
  aio on;
  tcp_nopush on;
  tcp_nodelay on;
  gzip on;

  brotli on;
  brotli_comp_level 4;
  brotli_static on;
  brotli_types
    text/plain
    text/css
    text/xml
    text/javascript
    text/x-component
    application/xml
    application/xml+rss
    application/javascript
    application/json
    application/atom+xml
    application/vnd.ms-fontobject
    application/x-font-ttf
    application/x-font-opentype
    application/x-font-truetype
    application/x-web-app-manifest+json
    application/xhtml+xml
    application/octet-stream
    font/opentype
    font/truetype
    font/eot
    font/otf
    image/svg+xml
    image/x-icon
    image/vnd.microsoft.icon
    image/bmp;

  client_max_body_size 8M;
  keepalive_timeout 90;
  keepalive_requests 102400;
  reset_timedout_connection on;
  client_body_timeout 10;
  send_timeout 5;

  open_file_cache max=204800 inactive=5m;
  open_file_cache_valid 2m;
  open_file_cache_min_uses 2;
  open_file_cache_errors off;

  root /nginx/var;

  include /nginx/etc/*.conf;
}

The default configuration contains no special settings. It enables brotli compression, sets the workers to the same amount as n-CPUs available, has two default logging formats, disables most stuff not needed and enables best performance settings. Please mount your own config if you need to change how nginx is setup.

VOLUMES 📁

• /nginx/etc - Directory of vHost config, must end in *.conf
• /nginx/var - Directory of webroot for vHost

COMPOSE ✂️

name: "nginx"
services:
  nginx:
    image: "11notes/nginx:1.28.0"
    read_only: true
    environment:
      TZ: "Europe/Zurich"
    ports:
      - "3000:3000/tcp"
    networks:
      frontend:
    volumes:
      - "etc:/nginx/etc"
      - "var:/nginx/var"
    tmpfs:
      - "/nginx/cache:uid=1000,gid=1000"
      - "/nginx/run:uid=1000,gid=1000"
    restart: "always"

volumes:
  etc:
  var:

networks:
  frontend:

DEFAULT SETTINGS 🗃️

Parameter	Value	Description
user	docker	user name
uid	1000	user identifier
gid	1000	group identifier
home	/nginx	home directory of user docker

ENVIRONMENT 📝

Parameter	Value	Default
TZ	Time Zone
DEBUG	Will activate debug option for container image and app (if available)

SOURCE 💾

• 11notes/nginx

PARENT IMAGE 🏛️

Important

This image is not based on another image but uses scratch as the starting layer. The image consists of the following distroless layers that were added:

• 11notes/distroless - contains users, timezones and Root CA certificates
• 11notes/distroless:curl - app to execute HTTP or UNIX requests

BUILT WITH 🧰

• nginx

GENERAL TIPS 📌

Tip

• Use a reverse proxy like Traefik, Nginx, HAproxy to terminate TLS and to protect your endpoints
• Use Let’s Encrypt DNS-01 challenge to obtain valid SSL certificates for your services

ElevenNotes™️

This image is provided to you at your own risk. Always make backups before updating an image to a different version. Check the releases for breaking changes. If you have any problems with using this image simply raise an issue, thanks. If you have a question or inputs please create a new discussion instead of an issue. You can find all my other repositories on github.

created 28.04.2025, 11:03:22 (CET)