NGINX in Alpine Linux in Docker

This Docker image (linuxcontainers/nginx) is based on the minimal Alpine Linux.

Alpine Version 3

This docker image is the base Alpine Linux. For more info on versions & support see Releases

NGINX Version 1.22.1

This docker image nginx-1.22.1 is the stable version has been released, incorporating new features and bug fixes from the 1.17.x mainline branch. For more info on versions & support see Releases

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What is Alpine Linux?

Alpine Linux is a Linux distribution built around musl libc and BusyBox. The image is only 10 MB in size and has access to a package repository that is much more complete than other BusyBox based images. This makes Alpine Linux a great image base for utilities and even production applications. Read more about Alpine Linux here and you can see how their mantra fits in right at home with Docker images.

What is NGINX?

NGINX is open source software for web serving, reverse proxying, caching, load balancing, media streaming, and more. It started out as a web server designed for maximum performance and stability. In addition to its HTTP server capabilities, NGINX can also function as a proxy server for email (IMAP, POP3, and SMTP) and a reverse proxy and load balancer for HTTP, TCP, and UDP servers

Features

HTTP proxy and Web server features
Ability to handle more than 10,000 simultaneous connections with a low memory footprint (~2.5 MB per 10k inactive HTTP keep-alive connections)
Handling of static files, index files and auto-indexing
Reverse proxy with caching
Load balancing with in-band health checks
TLS/SSL with SNI and OCSP stapling support, via OpenSSL
FastCGI, SCGI, uWSGI support with caching
gRPC support since March 2018, version 1.13.10
Name- and IP address-based virtual servers
IPv6-compatible
WebSockets since 1.3.13.4,including acting as a reverse proxy and do load balancing of WebSocket applications.
HTTP/1.1 Upgrade (101 Switching Protocols), HTTP/2 protocol support
URL rewriting and redirection\

Docker Tags and Versioning Scheme

Each image pushed to Docker Hub and the Github Container Registry is tagged as follows:

• The tag latest indicates, well, the latest image.
• Tags of the form MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH (such as 3.14.3) indicate the SemVer of the Alpine image used as the base.
• Tags of the form MAJOR.MINOR (e.g., 3.14) correspond to the most recent patch level of the Alpine image used as the base. For example, if 11.1 is the latest release, then 11 maps to this as well.
• Tags of the form MAJOR (e.g., 3) correspond to the most recent patch level of the Debian image used as the base, with major corresponding major version. For example, if 11.1 is the latest release, then 11 maps to this as well.

Semantic Versioning uses version numbers of the form: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, where differences in MAJOR correspond to incompatible changes, differences in MINOR correspond to introduction of backwards compatible new functionality, and PATCH corresponds to backwards compatible bug fixes.

Installation and Usage

The pre-built image is hosted on both Docker Hub and the Github Container Registry. You can use it in the following ways.

Docker Pull Command

Pull the latest image from Docker Hub with the following (replace latest with a specific version number if you prefer):

docker pull linuxcontainers/nginx:latest

Pull from the Github Container Registry with:

docker pull ghcr.io/linuxcontainers/nginx:latest

Use as a base image in a Dockerfile

Use as a base image in a Dockerfile (replace latest with a specific version number if you prefer):

FROM linuxcontainers/nginx:latest

# The rest of your Dockerfile would go here.

Or you can use as a base image (via the Github Container Registry) with:

FROM ghcr.io/linuxcontainers/nginx:latest

# The rest of your Dockerfile would go here.

A specific example usage can be found in the Dockerfile of the generate-sitemap Github action.