Compiling NGINX module as dynamic module for use in docker

README.md

Compiling NGINX module as dynamic module for use in docker

NGINX offers some very convenient Docker containers, but it is not documented how to extend the functionality of those containers without re-compiling NGINX yourself and continuously adapting your Dockerfile to match the ones in https://github.com/nginxinc/docker-nginx/.

This gist offers a way to build a NGINX ‘dynamic module’ against the widely used “nginx:alpine” docker image. Simply copy this Dockerfile & replace the arguments of the “wget” & “tar” & “configure” commands to include the module you want to build, then adjust the COPY command copying the module (.so file). In this example the NCHAN module is used as an example.

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Dockerfile

FROM nginx:alpine AS builder

# nginx:alpine contains NGINX_VERSION environment variable, like so:
# ENV NGINX_VERSION 1.15.0

# Our NCHAN version
ENV NCHAN_VERSION 1.1.15

# Download sources
RUN wget "http://nginx.org/download/nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}.tar.gz" -O nginx.tar.gz && \
  wget "https://github.com/slact/nchan/archive/v${NCHAN_VERSION}.tar.gz" -O nchan.tar.gz

# For latest build deps, see https://github.com/nginxinc/docker-nginx/blob/master/mainline/alpine/Dockerfile
RUN apk add --no-cache --virtual .build-deps \
  gcc \
  libc-dev \
  make \
  openssl-dev \
  pcre-dev \
  zlib-dev \
  linux-headers \
  curl \
  gnupg \
  libxslt-dev \
  gd-dev \
  geoip-dev

# Reuse same cli arguments as the nginx:alpine image used to build
RUN CONFARGS=$(nginx -V 2>&1 | sed -n -e 's/^.*arguments: //p') \
	tar -zxC /usr/src -f nginx.tar.gz && \
  tar -xzvf "nchan.tar.gz" && \
  NCHANDIR="$(pwd)/nchan-${NCHAN_VERSION}" && \
  cd /usr/src/nginx-$NGINX_VERSION && \
  ./configure --with-compat $CONFARGS --add-dynamic-module=$NCHANDIR && \
  make && make install

FROM nginx:alpine
# Extract the dynamic module NCHAN from the builder image
COPY --from=builder /usr/local/nginx/modules/ngx_nchan_module.so /usr/local/nginx/modules/ngx_nchan_module.so
RUN rm /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
COPY default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
EXPOSE 80
STOPSIGNAL SIGTERM
CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"]

nginx.conf

# Addition: load NCHAN
load_module /usr/local/nginx/modules/ngx_nchan_module.so;

user  nginx;
worker_processes  5; # Addition: ultiple workers for NCHAN
error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       /etc/nginx/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  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    keepalive_timeout  65;

    #gzip  on;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}