Setting Up Hugo with NGINX on LXC

This guide walks you through deploying a Hugo static site using the PaperMod theme, hosted on an unprivileged LXC container running NGINX. This version includes a manual installation of Hugo via .deb for full control over the version.

📁 Prerequisites

Proxmox or any hypervisor

Ubuntu 22.04 LXC (unprivileged)

A non-root user with sudo privileges

🛠️ Step 1: Install Required Dependencies

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y curl wget git nginx

📆 Step 2: Install Hugo Manually (v0.147.8)

wget https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/v0.147.8/hugo_0.147.8_linux-amd64.deb
chmod +x hugo_0.147.8_linux-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i hugo_0.147.8_linux-amd64.deb
hugo version

🏠 Step 3: Create Your Hugo Site

sudo mkdir -p /opt/web && cd /opt/web
sudo chown $USER:$USER /opt/web
hugo new site packetrealm.io
cd packetrealm.io

🎨 Step 4: Install PaperMod Theme

git init
git submodule add https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod themes/PaperMod
git submodule update --init --recursive

⚙️ Step 5: Configure PaperMod Theme

Replace config.yaml with:

baseURL: "https://packetrealm.io/"
title: "PacketRealm"
theme: "PaperMod"
languageCode: "en-us"
params:
  homeInfoParams:
    Title: "PacketRealm.io"
    Content: |
      Welcome to my cyber lair.
      Homelab engineer. Network alchemist.
      Every byte has a purpose. Every route, a secret.
  socialIcons:
    - name: "github"
      url: "https://github.com/hiltondsilva"
    - name: "linkedin"
      url: "https://linkedin.com/in/hiltondsilva"
markup:
  goldmark:
    renderer:
      unsafe: true

✍️ Step 6: Create First Post

hugo new posts/welcome.md

Populate it with content (example: site intro, lab summary, etc.)

🔧 Step 7: Build the Site

hugo --cleanDestinationDir

This generates static content in public/

🌐 Step 8: Configure NGINX to Serve the Site

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Replace contents with:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name packetrealm.io;

    root /opt/web/packetrealm.io/public;
    index index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Test and reload:

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

✅ Final Check

Visit http://LXC-IP or set DNS for packetrealm.io to your server IP to access the site.