nginx reverse-proxy simple config not redirecting - docker

Question

To get the hang of nginx with docker, I have a very simple nginx.conf file + docker-compose, running 2 containers for 1 service (service itself+db).
What I want:
localhost --> show static page
localhost/pics --> show another static page
localhost/wekan --> redirect to my container, which is running on port 3001.
the last part (redirect to docker-container) does not work. The app can be reached under localhost:3001, tho.
My nginx.conf:
user www-data;
worker_processes auto;
pid /run/nginx.pid;
include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf;
events {
worker_connections 768;
# multi_accept on;
}
http {
server{
listen 80;
location / {
root /home/user/serverTest/up1; #index.html is here
}
location /wekan {
proxy_pass http://localhost:3001;
rewrite ^/wekan(.*)$ $1 break; # this didnt help either
}
location /pics {
proxy_pass http://localhost/example.jpg;
}
location ~ \.(gif|jpg|png)$ {
root /home/user/serverTest/data/images;
}
}
docker-compose.yml:
version: '2'
services:
wekandb:
image: mongo:3.2.21
container_name: wekan-db
restart: always
command: mongod --smallfiles --oplogSize 128
networks:
- wekan-tier
expose:
- 27017
volumes:
- /home/user/wekan/wekan-db:/data/db
- /home/user/wekan/wekan-db-dump:/dump
wekan:
image: quay.io/wekan/wekan
container_name: wekan-app
restart: always
networks:
- wekan-tier
ports:
# Docker outsideport:insideport
- 127.0.0.1:3001:8080
environment:
- MONGO_URL=mongodb://wekandb:27017/wekan
- ROOT_URL=http://localhost
Looking at the nginx-error logs, I get this:
2018/12/17 11:57:16 [error] 9060#9060: *124 open() "/home/user/serverTest/up1/31fb090e9e6464a4d62d3588afc742d2e11dc1f6.js" failed (2: No such file or directory),
client: 127.0.0.1, server: ,
request: "GET /31fb090e9e6464a4d62d3588afc742d2e11dc1f6.js?meteor_js_resource=true HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost",
referrer: "http://localhost/wekan"
So I guess this makes sense because in my understanding, nginx is now adding the redirect to the root given # /, but clearly this is not where the container is running.
How do I prevent that?

Answer 1

Your nginx cannot access the local network interface of your docker composition.
Try to bind wekan's port like this:
wekan:
ports:
- 127.0.0.1:3001:8080
Mind the 127.0.0.1
See https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/#ports

Answer 2

the problem was within the docker-compose configuration.
For anyone wondering, all you need is a proxy pass addr:port or addr:port/ whereas the 2nd option does the same as the rewrite part, so this can be skipped.
Apart from that, i had to add the /wekan into the ROOT_URL inside my docker-compose