How to run Nginx within a Docker container without halting?

I have Nginx installed on a Docker container, and am trying to run it like this:

docker run -i -t -p 80:80 mydockerimage /usr/sbin/nginx 

The problem is that the way Nginx works, is that the initial process immediately spawns a master Nginx process and some workers, and then quits. Since Docker is only watching the PID of the original command, the container then halts.

How do I prevent the container from halting? I need to be able to tell it to bind to the first child process, or stop Nginx's initial process from exiting.

10 Answers

To expand on Charles Duffy's answer, Nginx uses the daemon off directive to run in the foreground. If it's inconvenient to put this in the configuration file, we can specify it directly on the command line. This makes it easy to run in debug mode (foreground) and directly switch to running in production mode (background) by changing command line args.

To run in foreground:

nginx -g 'daemon off;' 

To run in background:

nginx 

nginx, like all well-behaved programs, can be configured not to self-daemonize.

Use the daemon off configuration directive described in .

To expand on John's answer you can also use the Dockerfile CMD command as following (in case you want it to self start without additional args)

CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"] 

Just FYI, as of today (22 October 2019) official Nginx docker images all have line:

CMD ["nginx", "-g", "daemon off;"] 

e.g.

Adding this command to Dockerfile can disable it:

RUN echo "daemon off;" >> /etc/nginx/nginx.conf 

Here you have an example of a Dockerfile that runs nginx. As mentionned by Charles, it uses the daemon off configuration:

To add Tomer and Charles answers,

Syntax to run nginx in forground in Docker container using Entrypoint:

ENTRYPOINT nginx -g 'daemon off;' 

Not directly related but to run multiple commands with Entrypoint:

ENTRYPOINT /bin/bash -x /myscripts/myscript.sh && nginx -g 'daemon off;' 

For all who come here trying to run a nginx image in a docker container, that will run as a service

As there is no whole Dockerfile, here is my whole Dockerfile solving the issue.

Nice and working. Thanks to all answers here in order to solve the final nginx issue.

FROM ubuntu:18.04 MAINTAINER stackoverfloguy "" RUN apt-get update -y RUN apt-get install net-tools nginx ufw sudo -y RUN adduser --disabled-password --gecos '' docker RUN adduser docker sudo RUN echo '%sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' >> /etc/sudoers USER docker RUN sudo ufw default allow incoming RUN sudo rm /etc/nginx/nginx.conf RUN sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-available/default RUN sudo rm /var/www/html/index.nginx-debian.html VOLUME /var/log VOLUME /usr/share/nginx/html VOLUME /etc/nginx VOLUME /var/run COPY conf/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf COPY content/* /var/www/html/ COPY Dockerfile /var/www/html COPY start.sh /etc/nginx/start.sh RUN sudo chmod +x /etc/nginx/start.sh RUN sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/html EXPOSE 80 EXPOSE 443 ENTRYPOINT sudo nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf -g 'daemon off;' 

And run it with:

docker run -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -dit 

It is also good idea to use supervisord or runit[1] for service management.

[1]

In the official notes for the official NGINX image on DockerHub it states:

If you add a custom CMD in the Dockerfile, be sure to include -g daemon off; in the CMD in order for nginx to stay in the foreground, so that Docker can track the process properly (otherwise your container will stop immediately after starting)!

This makes me thing removing the CMD [] might prevent this issue from occurring in the first place?