Error trying to run nginx using docker-compose with custom conf.d

Question

I'm trying to set up a web server with multiple containers - but starting with a simple setup for my reverse proxy.

My docker-compose.yml looks as follows:

version: '3'

services:
    reverse-proxy:
        container_name: reverse-proxy
        hostname: reverse-proxy
        image: nginx:latest
        ports:
        - 80:80
        volumes:
        - ./nginx-config/conf.d:/etc/nginx/conf.d
        - ./html:/usr/share/nginx/html
        environment:
            - NGINX_PORT=80
            - ENV=development

Having nginx-config folder structure like:

nginx-config
|- templates
  |-default.conf.template
  |- sites-available
    |- mysite.conf.template

And default.conf.template that looks like:

server {
    listen       ${NGINX_PORT} default_server;
    listen  [::]:${NGINX_PORT} default_server;
    
    server_name  _;
    root   /usr/share/nginx/html;

    charset UTF-8;

    error_page 404 /notfound.html;
    location = /notfound.html {
        allow   all;
    }
    location / {
        return 404;
    }

    access_log off;
    log_not_found off;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log error;
}

However, whenever I run docker-compose --context myremote up it doesn´t work, throwing the following output:

reverse-proxy    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: /docker-entrypoint.d/ is not empty, will attempt to perform configuration
reverse-proxy    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Looking for shell scripts in /docker-entrypoint.d/
reverse-proxy    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh
reverse-proxy    | 10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh: Getting the checksum of /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
reverse-proxy    | 10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh: /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf differs from the packaged version, exiting
reverse-proxy    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Launching /docker-entrypoint.d/20-envsubst-on-templates.sh
reverse-proxy    | /docker-entrypoint.sh: Configuration complete; ready for start up

It all generates the right output under nginx-config/conf.d/default.conf at least on my local machine.

Is there any way I can take advantage of custom config and templates using docker-compose without running into such an issue?

Answer 1

Problem solved.

I was trying to perform this using a docker context onto an EC2 machine.

Whilst Docker --context [context] has been part of the stable version (at least for MacOS) for a while, docker-compose --context [context] was added on v1.26.0-rc2 so at this moment in time you need Docker Edge installed in order to make it work.

I was using set context [context] rather than the explicit --context form which meant I was actually deploying locally but being unaware of it.