Mini-Tutorial: Migrating from Nginx Proxy Manager to Nginx

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/selfhosted by /u/Normanras on 2023-08-05 21:49:32.

For a while, I've been kicking myself because I had Nginx Proxy Manager setup but didn't really understand the underlying functionality of Nginx config files and how they work. The allure of a GUI!

As a self-hoster and homelabber, this was always on the "future todo list". Then, Christian Lempa published his video about the dangers of bringing small projects into your home lab - even as well-known ones as NPM.

I decided to make the move from NPM to Nginx and thought I'd share my experience and the steps I took with the community. I am not a content creator or any sort of professional documenter. But in my own self-hosted journey I've benefited so much from other people's blogs, websites, and write-ups, that this is just my small contribution back.

I committed the full write-up to my Github which may provide more details and insights. For those just here on Reddit, I have a short version below.

Some assumptions: I currently am using NPM with Docker and Nginx installed using Ubuntu's package manager. The file paths should be similar regardless of the hosting vehicle. I tried my best not to assume too much Linux/CLI knowledge, but if you've gotten this far, you should know some basic CLI commands including how to edit, copy, and symlink files. The full write-up has the full commands and example proxy host files.

There may be something wrong or essential that I've forgotten - I'm learning just like everyone else! Happy to incorporate changes.

tl;dr version

Stop both NPM and Nginx first.
- systemctl stop nginx
- docker stop npm (or whatever you've named the container).
Copy the following contents (including sub-directories) from the NPM /data/nginx directory to the Nginx /etc/nginx folder:

* `proxy_hosts` >  `sites-available`
* `conf.d` > `conf.d`
* `snippets` > `snippets`
* `custom_ssl` > `custom_ssl` (if applicable)

Edit each file in your sites-available directory and update the paths. Most will change from /data/nginx/ to /etc/nginx.
Edit your nginx.conf file and ensure the following two paths are there:

* `include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;` and `include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;`

From within the sites-available directory, symlink the proxy host files in sites-available to sites-enabled

* `ln -s * ./sites-enabled`

Test your changes with nginx -t. Make appropriate changes if there are error messages.

And that's it! You can now start Nginx and check for any errors using systemctl status nginx. Good luck and happy hosting!

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