Running Chibisafe with Nginx Proxy Manager through Docker

This guide shows you how to run Chibisafe with Nginx Proxy Manager (or NPM) through Docker without the internal Caddy server.

In order to install chibisafe and run it with Nginx Proxy Manager there are a few things you need to set up on your system beforehand. This guide assumes you are using Ubuntu/Debian so feel free to adjust commands as you see fit based on your distro.

Pre-requisites

Before running chibisafe make sure you install docker and docker-compose. Please refer to the official Docker documentation for installation instructions.

You will need to setup Nginx Proxy Manager as well, on port 80, 443 and 81. Go to the official Nginx Proxy Manager documentation for installation instructions.

You will also need a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) pointing to your server. You can use a service like Cloudflare to get a domain.

Installing

This guide assumes you will use Docker to run chibisafe. If you want to run it manually, just follow the manual guide and install Nginx Proxy Manager like we said.

First, move to a place where you can install it:

cd /home/<your user>

Then, make a directory for chibisafe and move to it:

mkdir chibisafe
cd chibisafe

Now, you need to create a docker-compose.yml file. You can use the following template:

version: "3.7"

services:
  chibisafe:
    image: chibisafe/chibisafe:latest
    environment:
      - BASE_API_URL=http://chibisafe_server:8000
    expose:
      - 8001
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 8001:8001

  chibisafe_server:
    image: chibisafe/chibisafe-server:latest
    volumes:
      - ./database:/app/database:rw
      - ./uploads:/app/uploads:rw
      - ./logs:/app/logs:rw
    expose:
      - 8000
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 8000:8000

What did we change? We removed the caddy section, as we won't need it. We also exposed to the host the ports 8000 and 8001, so Nginx Proxy Manager can access them.

Now, you can run docker-compose up -d to start chibisafe.

Configuring Nginx Proxy Manager

Now, you need to configure Nginx Proxy Manager to proxy the requests to chibisafe. Go to your Nginx Proxy Manager instance and add a new proxy host.

• Domain Names: Your domain name (e.g. chibisafe.example.com)
• Scheme: http
• Forward Hostname/IP: <your local ip or public ip>
• Forward Port: 8001

Don't forget to enable cache assets, websockets support and configure an SSL certificate (also enable force ssl). You can use Let's Encrypt for that.

Then, head over to the location tab and add a two new locations:

• location: /api
• scheme: http
• forward hostname/ip: <your local ip or public ip>
• forward port: 8000

And

• location: /docs
• scheme: http
• forward hostname/ip: <your local ip or public ip>
• forward port: 8000

You can now save the configuration and wait for Nginx Proxy Manager to apply the changes.

DNS Configuration

Now, you need to configure your DNS to point to your server. You can use Cloudflare for that. Just add an A record pointing to your server's IP.

Serve the uploads

As we just saw before, in the docker-compose.yml file we removed the static file serving. You will need to serve your chibisafe files from a different location with either a web server or a Docker container image that allows this, and then configure chibisafe accordingly.

Here is an example on how to serve the files with a docker image file server:

version: "3.7"

services:
  sfs:
    image: halverneus/static-file-server:v1.8.3
    ports:
      - "8002:8080"
    volumes:
      - "./uploads:/web"

  chibisafe:
    image: chibisafe/chibisafe:latest
    environment:
      - BASE_API_URL=http://chibisafe_server:8000
    expose:
      - 8001
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 8001:8001

  chibisafe_server:
    image: chibisafe/chibisafe-server:latest
    volumes:
      - ./database:/app/database:rw
      - ./uploads:/app/uploads:rw
      - ./logs:/app/logs:rw
    expose:
      - 8000
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 8000:8000

Here is our new docker-compose.yml file that will run both chibisafe and the file server. The file server will serve the files from the uploads folder and listen on port 8002, so make sure to not have anything on that port. you can change the port if you want.

Now, you can run docker-compose up -d to start chibisafe and the file server.

Now we need to configure Nginx Proxy Manager to proxy the requests to the file server. Go to your Nginx Proxy Manager instance and add a new proxy host:

• Domain Names: Your domain name (e.g. files.example.com)
• Scheme: http
• Forward Hostname/IP: <your local ip or public ip>
• Forward Port: 8002

Don't forget to enable cache assets and configure an SSL certificate (also enable force ssl).

You can now save the configuration and wait for Nginx Proxy Manager to apply the changes.

Then, head over to your chibisafe installation, as some changes must be made. Go to dashboard -> settings -> service and change the Serve Uploads From to your file server domain (e.g. https://files.example.com). Don't forget the http:// or https://!

This change may need a restart so feel free to restart your chibisafe instance by heading over to where your docker-compose.yml file is and running docker-compose down && docker-compose up -d.

Done!

You can now access chibisafe through your domain name. If you have any issues, feel free to ask for help in our Discord server.