SOMEBODY HELP MEEEE (i'm new to this so plz don't be mean)

Self-host
1

front end keeps restarting(?) it turns orange then back to green then orange then back to green, ONLY WHEN IT’S OFFLINE. i’ve literally tried every single recommendation out there to fix this and nothing works. i’m pulling my hair out. i’m trying to run penpot completely offline. i have docker desktop and these are the images i have with me -

penpotapp/exporter

latest

2 days ago

2.41 GB

penpotapp/frontend

latest

2 days ago

1.5 GB

penpotapp/backend

latest

2 days ago

1.29 GB

postgres

15

6 days ago

632.67 MB

valkey/valkey

8.1

2 months ago

163.15 MB

sj26/mailcatcher

latest

2 years ago

211.34 MB

these are the logs from the front end [the orange one]-

[emerg] 1#1: host not found in upstream “raw.githubusercontent.com” in /etc/nginx/overrides/location.d/external-locations.conf:3

nginx: [emerg] host not found in upstream “raw.githubusercontent dot com” in /etc/nginx/overrides/location.d/external-locations.conf:3

2026/02/18 15:02:31 [emerg] 1#1: host not found in upstream “raw.githubusercontent dot com” in /etc/nginx/overrides/location.d/external-locations.conf:3

nginx: [emerg] host not found in upstream “raw.githubusercontent com” in /etc/nginx/overrides/location.d/external-locations.conf:3

2026/02/18 15:02:33 [emerg] 1#1: host not found in upstream “raw.githubusercontent com” in /etc/nginx/overrides/location.d/external-locations.conf:3

same thing over and over and over and over again…

does anyone know a sort of one and done fix for this? or just ANY fix?. i’m trying to run it on my laptop for personal use. i’m not a professional. i’ve already been to this link- 2. Penpot Configuration tried it. not sure if i’m doing something wrong, but it still didn’t help.

3

I seem to have the same issue, where the frontend container keeps on restarting with the same nginx: [emerg] host not found in upstream “raw.githubusercontent.com” in /etc/nginx/overrides/location.d/external-locations.conf:3

A solution would be really appreciated

1 Like
Problems on Self-Host
4

Found the fix:

5

Yeah, i’ve seen this too and it doesn’t seem to work for me. do you mind showing me the steps you took to make it work?

6

Hi there!

the error means that the server running Penpot cannot connect to githubusercontent.com; typically this is because you’re working in an air-gapped environment.

You have two options:

  • disable the specific features that try to connect outside (libraries and google fonts), using these flags: `disable-dashboard-templates-section` (for libraries and templates, hosted in github) and disable-google-fonts-provider (for google fonts, so you can only use the fonts you install in your server).
  • use the general configuration for air-gappend environments, which is the flag enable-air-gapped-conf. This configuration will disable both libraries and fonts, so your server don’t request them.

If you try one of them, and still get an error, we need some information to help you debug the issue:

  • which flags are you using, you can paste them there
  • which error are you getting in the logs

Cheers!