Best way to dockerize a static website?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Dirk@lemmy.ml⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I’m currently researching the best method for running a static website from Docker.

The site consists of one single HTML file, a bunch of CSS files, and a few JS files. On server-side nothing needs to be preprocessed. The website uses JS to request some JSON files, though. Handling of the files is doing via client-side JS, the server only need to - serve the files.

The website is intended to be used as selfhosted web application and is quite niche so there won’t be much load and not many concurrent users.

I boiled it down to the following options:

BusyBox in a selfmade Docker container, manually running httpd or The smallest Docker image …
php:latest (ignoring the fact, that the built-in webserver is meant for development and not for production)
Nginx serving the files (but this)

For all of the variants I found information online. From the options I found I actually prefer the BusyBox route because it seems the cleanest with the least amount of overhead (I just need to serve the files, the rest is done on the client).

Do you have any other ideas? How do you host static content?

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Comments

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CameronDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Just go nginx, anything else is faffing about. Busybox may not be security tested, so best to avoid on the internet. Php is pointless when its a static site with no php. Id avoid freenginx until its clear that it is going to be supported. There is nothing wrong with stock nginx, the fork is largely political rather than technical.

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- Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Php is pointless when its a static site with no php
  
  Absolutely, but it has a built-in webserver that can serve static files, too (I constantly use that in my dev environment).
  
  But I guess you’re mostly right about just using Nginx. I already have multiple containers running it, though. Most of them just serving static files.
  
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  - CameronDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Having PHP installed is just unnecessary attack surface.
    
    Are you really struggling for space that 50mb matters? An 8gb usb can hold thar 160x?
    
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  - lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Absolutely, but it has a built-in webserver that can serve static files, too (I constantly use that in my dev environment).
    
    How about Python? You can get an HTTP server going with just python3 -m http.server from the dir where the files are. Worth remembering because Python is super common and probably already installed in many places (be it on host or in containers).
    
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marcos@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The answer is get a minimum linux image, add nginx or apache, and put your content on the relevant place. (Basically, your third option.)

Do not bother about the future of nginx. Changing the web server on that image is the easiest thing in the world.

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Swarfega@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I just use nginx in docker. It runs from a Pi4 so needs to be lightweight. I’m sure there are lighter httpd servers to use, but it works for me. I also run nginx proxy manager to create a reverse proxy and to manage the certificate renewal that comes from Let’s Encrypt.

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- Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Same here. I have a few static sites setup to just be served via nginx.
  
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sudneo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I personally package the files in a scratch or distroless image and use github.com/static-web-server/static-web-server, which is a rust server, quite tiny. This is very similar to nginx or httpd, but the static nature of the binary removes clutter, reduces attack surface (because you can use smaller images) and reduces the size of the image.

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- Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thanks, this looks actually pretty great. From the description it’s basically BusyBox httpd but with Nginx stability and production-readiness and functionality. It also seems to be actively developed.
  
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sockenklaus@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’ve read that you’re trying for minimal resource overhead.

Is lighttpd still a thing? Back in the day I used it to deliver very simple static Http pages with minimal resource usage.

I found a docker image with like 4 mb size but being two years old I don’t know how well maintained lighttpd is these days.

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- Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The old age of the Docker image is a bit of a red flag to me.
  
  I settled with SWS since the Docker image and a locally installable version are actively maintained by the creator. It just serves static files and optionally directory listing as JSON (which comes in quite handy).
  
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lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I see from your other comments that you’re already running nginx in other containers. The simplest solution would be to make use of one of them. Zero overhead since you’re not adding any new container. 🙂

You mentioned you’re using NPM, well NPM already has a built-in nginx host that you can reach by making a proxy host pointed at 127.0.0.1:80 and adding the following to the “Advanced” tab:

location / { root /data/nginx/local_static; index index.html; }

Replace the root location with whatever dir you want, use a volume option on the NPM container to map the dir to the host, put your files in there and that’s it.
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- shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Clarity:
  
  NPM (Nginx Proxy Manager) != npm (node package manager).
  
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- jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Wait, really? I use NPM and also have two sites running via a separate nginx container – i feel so dumb now LMAO
  
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  - lemmyvore@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah it’s not exactly an obvious feature. I don’t even remember how I stumbled onto it, I think I was looking at the /data dirs and noticed the default one.
    
    I haven’t tried using it for more than one site but I think that if you add multiple domain names to the same proxy host they go to the same server instance and you might be able to tweak the “Advanced” config to serve all of them as virtual hosts.
    
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arran4@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The busybox one seems great as it comes with shells. php looks like it would add some issues.

Personally since I use go, I would create a go embedded app, which I would make a deb, rpm, and a dockerfile using “goreleaser”

package main import ( "embed" "net/http" ) //go:embed static/* var content embed.FS func main() { http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) { // Serve index.html as the default page http.ServeContent(w, r, "index.html", nil, content) }) // Serve static files http.Handle("/static/", http.StripPrefix("/static/", http.FileServer(http.FS(content)))) // Start the server http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil) }

Would be all the code but allows for expansion later. However the image goreleaser builds doesn’t come with busybox on it so you can’t docker exec into it. goreleaser.com/customization/docker/
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- sudneo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I would consider the lack of a shell a benefit in this scenario. You really don’t want the extra attack surface and tooling.
  
  Considering you also manage the host, if you want to see what’s going on inside the container (which for such a simple image can be done once while building it the first time more likely), you can use unshare to spawn a bash process in the container namespaces (e.g., unshare -m -p […] -t PID bash, or something like this - I am going by memory).
  
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ptman@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Forget about docker. Run caddy or some similar webserver that is a single file next to the assets to serve.

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- sudneo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Containers are a perfectly suitable use-case for serving static sites. You get isolation and versioning at the absolutely negligible cost of duplicating a binary (the webserver - which in case of the one I linked in my comment, it’s 5MB of space). Also, you get autostart of the server if you use compose, which is equivalent to what you would do with a Systemd unit, I suppose.
  
  You can then use a reverse-proxy to simply route to the different containers.
  
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  - jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    But it you already have an nginx or other web server otherwise required to start up (which is in all likelihood the case), you don’t need any more auto startup, the “reverse proxy” already started can just serve it. I would say that container orchestration versioning can be helpful in some scenarios, but a simple git repository for a static website is way more useful since it’s got the right tooling to annotate changes very specifically on demand.
    
    That reverse proxy is ultimately also a static file server. There’s really no value in spinning up more web servers for a strictly static site.
    
    Folks have gone overboard assuming docker or similar should wrap every little thing. It sometimes adds complexity without making anything simpler. It can simplify some scenarios, but adding a static site to a webserver is not a scenario that enjoys any benefit.
    
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  - smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Serving static app in Caddy:
    
    sudo apt install caddy sudo systemctl enable --now caddy
    
    Then in /etc/caddy/Caddyfile:
    
    example.com { root * /var/www/html file_server }
    
    That’s all, really.
    
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- possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Why? It seems like docker is way more flexible and maintainable.
  
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  - jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Because serving static files doesn’t really require any flexibility in web serving code.
    
    If your setup has an nginx or similar as a reverse proxy entry point, you can just tell it to serve the directory. Why bother making an entire new chroot and proxy hop when you have absolutely zero requirements beyond what the reverse proxy already provides. Now if you don’t have that entry point, fine, but at least 99% of the time I see some web server as initial arbiter into services that would have all the capability to just serve the files.
    
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- Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I already have a fully set up docker environment that serves all sorts of things (including some containers that serve special static content using Nginx).
  
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Lodra@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The simplest way is certainly to use a hosted service like GitHub Pages. These make it so easy to create static websites.

If you’re not flexible on that detail, then I next recommend Go actually. You could write a tiny web server and embed the static files into the app at build time. In the end, you’d have a single binary that acts as a web server and has your content. Super easy to dockize.

Things like authentication will complicate the app over time. If you need extra features like this, then I recommend using common tools like find as suggested by others.

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CetaceanNeeded@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I just use nginx alpine, if freenginx proves to be the better option later it should be fairly trivial to switch the base image.

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- Dirk@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes, Freenginx should/would/will be a drop-in replacement, at least int he beginning. We’ll see how this works out over time. Forks purely out of frustration never lived long enough to gain a user base and attract devs. But it’s an “anti corporate bullshit” fork and this alone puts it on my watchlist.
  
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justcallmelarry@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve always used an nginx alpine image and have been very happy with it.

Not sure how this fork business is turning out and I have also heard conflicting opinions on wether to care or not…

If you do wish for something simple that is not nginx I’m also very happy with caddy, which can also handle ssl certificates for you, if you plan to make it publicly reachable.

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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If your looking for a small size you could build a custom image with buildroot and lighttpd. It is way, way overkill but it would be the smallest.

For something easier use the latest image of your web server of choice and then pass though a directory with the files. From there you can automate patching with watch tower.

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- okamiueru@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s such a fun exercise. But as you point out, way overkill. Might even be dangerous to expose it. I’ve gotten mine to 20kb on top of busybox.
  
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summerof69@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Err, FROM webserver + COPY /path/to/content /path/to/server/directory? You don’t event expect users, what’s there to discuss?

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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters

HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web

SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption

nginx Popular HTTP server

[Thread #575 for this sub, first seen 5th Mar 2024, 14:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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- thepaperpilot@incremental.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Ngl calling nginx a contraction of "popular https server" is kinda wild
  
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Fewer Letters	More Letters
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
nginx	Popular HTTP server