Trying to run a Moodle instance on Docker using php-apache

I am setting up a Moodle instance on Docker with two containers:

• A MariaDB container (image: mariadb:latest)
• A PHP-Apache container (image: php:8.3-apache)

Docker indicates that both containers are running, and using nmap to scan localhost returns:

BASHCopied
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.000099s latency).
Not shown: 997 closed tcp ports (conn-refused)
PORT     STATE SERVICE
80/tcp   open  http
443/tcp  open  https
3306/tcp open  mysql

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.05 seconds

I forked a simple Moodle instance from Github - Moodle, and it is correctly installed in /var/www/html/moodle during the build. However, when I open localhost in the browser, I get the message:

127.0.0.1 didn’t send any data.

(Note: this is the browser message, not an Apache error.)

There are no error or log messages in my Docker containers. I already updated the Apache DocumentRoot to match the WORKDIR, but the problem persists. Due to the lack of feedback, I am unsure where to look next.

The following setup details may help replicate the scenario:

• Create a /moodle directory at your root with a clone of the Moodle repository from GitHub.
• Create an empty /moodledata directory with proper write/create rights.

docker-compose.yml

YAMLCopied
name: 'moodle_405'

services:
  mariadb:
    image: mariadb:latest
    container_name: mariadb
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=bitnami
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=moodle
      - MYSQL_USER=admin
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=password
    volumes:
      - ./mariadb:/var/lib/mysql
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"

  moodle:
    image: php:8.3-apache
    container_name: moodle
    build:
      context: .
      dockerfile: Dockerfile
    environment:
      - MOODLE_DATABASE_HOST=mariadb
      - MOODLE_DATABASE_NAME=moodle
      - MOODLE_DATABASE_USER=admin
      - MOODLE_DATABASE_PASSWORD=password
    volumes:
      # ./moodle contains a simple fork from moodle's github repository
      - ./moodle:/var/www/html/moodle
      # ./moodledata is an empty folder that will be updated during moodle's setup
      - ./moodledata:/var/www/moodledata
    depends_on:
      - mariadb
    ports:
      - "80:8080"
      - "443:8443"

Dockerfile

DOCKERFILECopied
FROM php:8.3-apache

LABEL maintainer="John Whick <babayaga@continental.com>"
LABEL description="John's Moodle setup for docker"
LABEL version="1.2"

# PHP extensions
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    libpng-dev \
    libjpeg-dev \
    libfreetype6-dev \
    libxml2-dev \
    libzip-dev \
    unzip \
    git \
    && docker-php-ext-install mysqli zip gd xml soap intl \
    && a2enmod rewrite

# Set Apache DocumentRoot
RUN sed -ri -e 's!/var/www/html!/var/www/html/moodle!g' \
    /etc/apache2/sites-available/*.conf \
    /etc/apache2/apache2.conf \
    /etc/apache2/conf-available/*.conf

WORKDIR /var/www/html/moodle

EXPOSE 80
EXPOSE 8080

Any insight or suggestions on how to resolve this issue would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.