Mesh Central in Docker behind NGINX Proxy Manager Reverse Proxy

• What is Nginx Proxy Manager (also known as NPM): https://nginxproxymanager.com/
• What is Mesh Central: https://meshcentral.com/info/

• We will be using an unofficial, but as of writing this article still maintained and community approved, Docker version of Mesh Central
• I will be using Portainer in this guide, but you can use manual Docker Compose if you wish
• Here is an example of my docker-compose.yml file

version: '3'

networks:
  reverse_proxy:
    external: true
volumes:
  data:
  files:
    
services:
    mongodb:
        container_name: meshcentral_db
        restart: always
        image: mongo:latest
        expose:
            - 27017
        volumes:
            - '/docker/containers/meshcentral/database:/data/db'
        networks:
          - reverse_proxy
          
    meshcentral:
        restart: always
        container_name: meshcentral
        depends_on:
            - 'mongodb'
        image: typhonragewind/meshcentral:mongodb-latest
        ports:
            - 8786:443 #MeshCentral will moan and try everything not to use port 80, but you can also use it if you so desire, just change the config.json according to your needs
        environment:
            - HOSTNAME=meshcentral.laptopwiki.eu     #your hostname
            - REVERSE_PROXY=nginx-proxy-manager     #set to your reverse proxy IP if you want to put meshcentral behind a reverse proxy
            - REVERSE_PROXY_TLS_PORT=443 #internal https port, only change if you don't use 443 for your incoming HTTPS for some reason
            - IFRAME=false #set to true if you wish to enable iframe support
            - ALLOW_NEW_ACCOUNTS=false    #set to false if you want disable self-service creation of new accounts besides the first (admin)
            - WEBRTC=false  #set to true to enable WebRTC - per documentation it is not offically released with meshcentral, but is solid enough to work with. Use with caution
            - NODE_ENV=production
            - TZ=Europe/Prague
        volumes:
            - data:/opt/meshcentral/meshcentral-data
            - files:/opt/meshcentral/meshcentral-files
        networks:
          - reverse_proxy

• In this, Mesh Central will use a MongoDB instance to store everything, instead of SQLite
• You must change:
  1. Network name to match what your NPM is using, in my case that name is “reverse_proxy”
  2. HOSTNAME - set your public FQDN
  3. REVERSE_PROXY - here put
     • IP address of your NGINX Proxy Manager if it is on a different server than where Mesh Central will live
     • internal docker Hostname if on the same Docker network ← My setup, “nginx-proxy-manager” is the Docker hostname. DO NOT USE DOCKER NETWORK IP ADDRESSES, they aren't static
• You can change
  • TZ - timezone, so your logs have proper timestamps, follows standardized naming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones
    • For example, TZ=Europe/Prague, TZ=America/New_York, TZ=Australia/Sydney
  • Storage mounts (I had issues with MeshCentral Volume paths, so that is why I'm using volumes)
  • ALLOW_NEW_ACCOUNTS=false, setting true would allow users to register
    With FALSE on first start you can create an account, that will be your admin, after that registrations get disabled