NGINX Proxy Manager

NGINX Proxy Manager is supported by Authelia. It’s a NGINX proxy with a configuration UI.

Important: When using these guides, it’s important to recognize that we cannot provide a guide for every possible method of deploying a proxy. These guides show a suggested setup only, and you need to understand the proxy configuration and customize it to your needs. To-that-end, we include links to the official proxy documentation throughout this documentation and in the See Also section.

Get started#

It’s strongly recommended that users setting up Authelia for the first time take a look at our Get started guide. This takes you through various steps which are essential to bootstrapping Authelia.

Requirements#

NGINX Proxy Manager supports the required NGINX requirements for Authelia out-of-the-box.

Trusted Proxies#

Important: You should read the Forwarded Headers section and this section as part of any proxy configuration. Especially if you have never read it before.

To configure trusted proxies for NGINX Proxy Manager see the NGINX section on Trusted Proxies. Adapting this to NGINX Proxy Manager is beyond the scope of this documentation.

Assumptions and Adaptation#

This guide makes a few assumptions. These assumptions may require adaptation in more advanced and complex scenarios. We can not reasonably have examples for every advanced configuration option that exists. The following are the assumptions we make:

• Deployment Scenario:
  • Single Host
  • Authelia is deployed as a Container with the container name authelia on port 9091
  • Proxy is deployed as a Container on a network shared with Authelia
• The above assumption means that Authelia should be accessible to the proxy on http://authelia:9091 and as such:
  • You will have to adapt all instances of the above URL to be https:// if Authelia configuration has a TLS key and certificate defined
  • You will have to adapt all instances of authelia in the URL if:
    • you’re using a different container name
    • you deployed the proxy to a different location
  • You will have to adapt all instances of 9091 in the URL if:
    • you have adjusted the default port in the configuration
  • You will have to adapt the entire URL if:
    • Authelia is on a different host to the proxy
• All services are part of the example.com domain:
  • This domain and the subdomains will have to be adapted in all examples to match your specific domains unless you’re just testing or you want to use that specific domain

Docker Compose#

The following docker compose example has various applications suitable for setting up an example environment.

---
networks:
  net:
    driver: 'bridge'

services:
  nginx:
    container_name: 'nginx'
    image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager'
    restart: 'unless-stopped'
    networks:
      net:
        aliases: []
    ports:
      - '80:80'
      - '81:81'
      - '443:443'
    volumes:
      - '${PWD}/data/nginx-proxy-manager/data:/data'
      - '${PWD}/data/nginx-proxy-manager/letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt'
      - '${PWD}/data/nginx/snippets:/snippets'
    environment:
      TZ: 'Australia/Melbourne'
  authelia:
    container_name: 'authelia'
    image: 'authelia/authelia'
    restart: 'unless-stopped'
    networks:
      net:
        aliases: []
    expose:
      - 9091
    volumes:
      - '${PWD}/data/authelia/config:/config'
    environment:
      TZ: 'Australia/Melbourne'
  nextcloud:
    container_name: 'nextcloud'
    image: 'lscr.io/linuxserver/nextcloud'
    restart: 'unless-stopped'
    networks:
      net:
        aliases: []
    expose:
      - 443
    volumes:
      - '${PWD}/data/nextcloud/config:/config'
      - '${PWD}/data/nextcloud/data:/data'
    environment:
      PUID: '1000'
      PGID: '1000'
      TZ: 'Australia/Melbourne'
  whoami:
    container_name: 'whoami'
    image: 'docker.io/traefik/whoami'
    restart: 'unless-stopped'
    networks:
      net:
        aliases: []
    expose:
      - 80
    environment:
      TZ: 'Australia/Melbourne'
...

Configuration#

Assumptions#

Important: Our examples make assumptions about your configuration. These assumptions represent sections that either most likely require an adjustment, or may require an adjustment if you’re not configuring it in the same way.

• The domain for Authelia is auth.example.com which should be adjusted in all examples and snippets to your actual domain.
• The required configuration snippets are mounted in the container or otherwise available in the /snippets/ directory. If you choose a different directory, you’re required to adjust every instance of /snippets/ appropriately to your needs.
• You have not configured the Authelia configuration YAML with a server TLS certificate/key.
• You are running Authelia on the default port.
• You are running Authelia with the container_name of authelia or the Authelia process is otherwise resolvable by NGINX Proxy Manager as authelia.
• If you want to use a Custom Location and wish for it to be protected, you should follow the Protected Application Custom Location guide.

Snippets#

The examples assume you’ve mounted a volume containing the relevant NGINX Snippets from the NGINX Integration Guide. The suggested snippets are the proxy.conf, authelia-location.conf, and authelia-authrequest.conf. It may be fine to substitute the standard variant of the proxy.conf for the headers only variant but this is untested.

These snippets make the addition of a protected proxy host substantially easier.

Authelia Portal#

The Authelia portal requires minimal configuration.

1. Create a new Proxy Host.
2. Set the following items in the Details tab:
   • Domain Names: auth.example.com
   • Scheme: http
   • Forward Hostname / IP: authelia
   • Forward Port: 9091
3. Configure your SSL tab to:
   • Serve a valid certificate.
   • Force SSL: true
4. Configure your Advanced tab:

location / {
    include /snippets/proxy.conf;
    proxy_pass $forward_scheme://$server:$port;
}

Authelia Portal Screenshots#

Authelia Portal Details tab example:

Authelia Portal Advanced tab example:

Protected Application#

The following example shows how to configure a protected application. We often use Nextcloud for such examples.

1. Create a new Proxy Host.
2. Set the following items in the Details tab:
   • Domain Names: nextcloud.example.com
   • Scheme: http
   • Forward Hostname / IP: nextcloud
   • Forward Port: 80
3. Configure your SSL tab to:
   • Serve a valid certificate.
   • Force SSL: true
4. Configure your Advanced tab:

include /snippets/authelia-location.conf;

location / {
    include /snippets/proxy.conf;
    include /snippets/authelia-authrequest.conf;
    proxy_pass $forward_scheme://$server:$port;
}

Protected Application Screenshots#

Protected Application (Nextcloud) Details tab example:

Protected Application (Nextcloud) Advanced tab example:

Protected Application Custom Locations#

It’s important to note if you define locations in the Custom Locations tab of a proxy host that they will not be checked with Authelia for authorization effectively bypassing the authorization policies you implement. If you want a custom location then you can also define this in the advanced tab.

To replicate the Custom Location tab below a location block can be ADDED to the Protected Application Advanced tab:

location /custom {
    include /snippets/proxy.conf;
    include /snippets/authelia-authrequest.conf;
    proxy_pass http://192.168.1.20:8080;
}

Proxy Hosts Screenshot#

The following screenshot shows an example of following the directions for the Authelia Portal and two applications:

See Also#

• NGINX Proxy Manager Documentation
• NGINX ngx_http_auth_request_module Module Documentation
• Forwarded Headers