Nginx Proxy Manager: Can you use single IP address (no hostname) and different ports or paths to forward to different docker container applications?

Question

I do not have any hostnames like something.com to use. I only have the IP address of my server for access. Is there a way to configure Nginx Proxy Manager so when you request http://<ip_address>:8080 or http://<ip_address>/portainer, it will forward to a docker container application like portainer which is listening on port 9000?

As I am working inside a corporate network opening the other ports like 9000 is an act of congress. I was hoping a proxy would be a work-around.

I already followed this tutorial...

https://www.the-digital-life.com/portainer-ubuntu-tutorial/

... but the instructions show using subdomains like portainer.something.com to forward to docker container http://portainer:9000.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I do not believe so. NPM is expecting at least one FQDN(Fully Qualified Domain Name) to tell where its routing from/to.

If you can do that, then your second question is a yes. Within a Proxy Host settings, there is a "Custom Locations" tab where you can configure sub folders (at the url level) to proxy to different locations.

Custom Locations tab while editing a Proxy Host

If you do not have a FQDN that can be used publicly, and this is in a private lan, you can configure Split-Brain (or Split-Horizon) DNS. You would do this by adding a manual DNS entry into whatever service is running your DNS within your LAN. This way you can have myapp.myinternaldomain.test point to NPM, then you can either use different subdomains for each app, or subfolders. I personally recommend the subdomain approach, its more how NPM was intended to be used, and far less fragile.