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
httpdor 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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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.
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. But it’s ca. 50 megabytes compressed size each container just for Nginx alone.
Having PHP installed is just unnecessary attack surface.
Are you really struggling for space that 50mb matters? An 8gb usb can hold thar 160x?
Having PHP installed is just unnecessary attack surface.
Yes! Especially running it’s built-in webserver outside your dev environment. They “advertise” doing so in their Docker packages documentation, though. Every project without PHP is a good project. It’s still an option - at least technically.
Are you really struggling for space that 50mb matters?
In a way, yes. I just want to optimize my stuff as much as possible. No unneeded tools, no overhead, a super clean environment, etc. Firing up another Nginx container just doesn’t feel right anymore. (Even if it seems to be possible to manually “hack” file serving into NPM - which makes it a multi-use container serving various different sites and proxying requests.)
The machine I use as docker host also has a pretty low-end CPU and measly 4 gigabytes of RAM. So every resource not wasted is a good resource.
RAM is not the same as storage, that 50mb docker image isn’t going to require 50mb of ram to run. But don’t let me hold you back from your crusade :D
Thanks for educating me on basic computer knowledge! 🤣
Applications need RAM, though. A full-fledged webserver with all the bells and whistles likely needs more ram than a specialized single-binary static file delivery server.
Sorry, wasn’t meant to be condescending, you just seem fixated on file size when it sounds like RAM (and/or CPU?) is what you really want to optimise for? I was just pointing out that they arent necessarily correlated to docker image size.
If you really want to cut down your cpu and ram, and are okay with very limited functionality, you could probably write your own webserver to serve static files? Plain http is not hard. But you’d want to steer clear of python and node, as they drag in the whole interpreter overhead.
I care about anything. RAM usage, file size, etc. I’m a minimalist when it comes to software. Use as less of all resources as possible. After once writing a router in Python I thought I could do this in Lua, too, but never actually tried. Maybe this would be a nice weekend project?
Even if Nginx is the way to go, I currently experiment with SWS which was suggested here. Technical aspects aside: The software is actively developed and the maintainer provides Docker images on their own (easy for Deploying a container based on that) and a package for my distribution (easy for development testing).
caddy can serve the files and deal with SSL certificates in case you put this in a public domain.
Caddy is the way to go.
My setup already has Nginx Proxy Manager to handle SSL. This is specifically about serving files from within a docker container with as little overhead as possible.
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.
Same here. I have a few static sites setup to just be served via nginx.
Third for nginx here
I have a few static sites that are just nginx containers, one is just simple links to other things I run, to make it easy for my wife and some friends. Easy, lightweight, unprivileged - my favorite combo.
I personally package the files in a scratch or distroless image and use https://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.
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.
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 dockerize.
Things like authentication will complicate the app over time. If you need extra features like this, then I recommend using common tools like nginx as suggested by others.
Forget about docker. Run caddy or some similar webserver that is a single file next to the assets to serve.
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).
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.
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).
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption nginx Popular HTTP server
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.
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