Local docker development setu failure - openelisglobal-proxy | nginx: [emerg] host not found in upstream "frontend.openelis.org" in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:58

Community Development
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Hi Ronald,

Your dev.docker-compose.yml and nginx.conf actually agree on the service name (frontend.openelis.org), so this isn’t a config mismatch. The telling clue is in your log: openelisglobal-webapp, openelisglobal-front-end, and openelisglobal-database all show “Running 0.0s” — meaning Compose found them already running from an earlier session and left them alone, while only certs and proxy were (re)started fresh. If those leftover containers ended up on a different or half-torn-down network, a freshly created proxy container won’t be able to resolve them via Docker’s DNS, which is exactly what “host not found in upstream” means.

Try this:

  1. Fully tear down the stack (removes containers + network):
docker compose -f dev.docker-compose.yml down --remove-orphans
  1. Check for leftover containers/networks from a previous run:
docker ps -a | grep openelis
docker network ls | grep openelis

If anything shows up, remove it:

docker rm -f <container_name>
docker network rm <network_name>
  1. Make sure your code and images are current:
git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive
docker compose -f dev.docker-compose.yml pull
  1. Confirm a .env file exists in the repo root (create one if missing check the project wiki/README for required variables):
ls -la .env
  1. Bring the stack up fresh, forcing recreation of every container:
docker compose -f dev.docker-compose.yml up --force-recreate
  1. In a separate terminal, check the frontend container isn’t crash-looping this repo recently moved the dev frontend container to Vite, so a stale local image/cache can crash it shortly after start even though Compose briefly shows it as “running”:
docker logs openelisglobal-front-end
  1. If it still fails, check DNS resolution between proxy and frontend:
docker exec openelisglobal-proxy ping -c1 frontend.openelis.org
docker inspect openelisglobal-proxy | grep -A5 Networks
docker inspect openelisglobal-front-end | grep -A5 Networks

The two containers need to show the same network name for DNS resolution to work.

Let me know if any of these turn up something useful in the logs.
i actually think this thread would be helpful