/dnsmasq-nginx

dnsmasq-nginx

TL;DR

This has a Docker Compose that runs dnsmasq (DNS server) + nginx (reverse proxy) to redirect hostnames to specific Docker containers in a local network.

What this does

  • Runs dnsmasq by declaring the *.local hostnames (for example, subdomain1.example.local) to a local server IP
  • Runs nginx and redirects the same local server to different Docker containers based on the hostname.
    • For example, grafana.local will proxy to http://host.docker.internal:3000, where Grafana is running

Prerequisites

You will need:

  • Docker
  • If you are running this in Ubuntu you will need to disable the systemd-resolved DNS server since dnsmasq needs to bind to port 53 and install the resolvconf package to keep resolving domains in Ubuntu.

Running

To run this:

  1. Create an dsnsmasq.conf file like this.
address=/local/<your server IP>

no-resolv

server=8.8.8.8
server=8.8.4.4

# this should only be enabled for troubleshooting
# since it creates too many logs
# log-queries

  1. Configure the nginx.conf appropriately to your needs

  2. Run Docker Compose

docker compose up -d

  1. Before changing the DNS server in your router manually change the DNS server in one of your devices to test to avoid breaking the devices in your network

  2. If things go well change the DNS server in your router to use the DNS from dnsmasq.