unknown user 'npm'

[duczz]

Hey, i have this error after installing the NPM as Addon, someone know how to fix it?

1. Why the user is unknown in a default isntallation?
2. Why he wanna delete a config which i wanna use? this is my host to reach HA from external so it is in use

7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [Setup    ] › ℹ  info      Added Certbot plugins duckdns
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [Setup    ] › ℹ  info      Logrotate Timer initialized
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [Global   ] › ⬤  debug     CMD: logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [Setup    ] › ⚠  warning   CommandError: error: /etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager:2 unknown user 'npm' 
error: found error in /data/logs/*_access.log /data/logs/*/access.log , skipping
error: /etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager:16 unknown user 'npm'
error: found error in /data/logs/*_error.log /data/logs/*/error.log , skipping
    at /opt/nginx-proxy-manager/lib/utils.js:16:13
    at ChildProcess.exithandler (node:child_process:421:5)
    at ChildProcess.emit (node:events:518:28)
    at maybeClose (node:internal/child_process:1101:16)
    at ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:304:5)
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [Global   ] › ℹ  info      IP Ranges fetch is enabled
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [IP Ranges] › ℹ  info      Fetching IP Ranges from online services...
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [IP Ranges] › ℹ  info      Fetching https://ip-ranges.amazonaws.com/ip-ranges.json
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [IP Ranges] › ℹ  info      Fetching https://www.cloudflare.com/ips-v4
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [IP Ranges] › ℹ  info      Fetching https://www.cloudflare.com/ips-v6
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [SSL      ] › ℹ  info      Let's Encrypt Renewal Timer initialized
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [SSL      ] › ℹ  info      Renewing SSL certs expiring within 30 days ...
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [IP Ranges] › ℹ  info      IP Ranges Renewal Timer initialized
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [Global   ] › ℹ  info      Backend PID 168 listening on port 3000 ...
[7/10/2025] [10:38:10 AM] [SSL      ] › ℹ  info      Completed SSL cert renew process
185.218.84.29 - - [10/Jul/2025:10:41:45 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 444 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/90.0.4430.85 Safari/537.36 Edg/90.0.818.46"
185.218.84.46 - - [10/Jul/2025:10:45:25 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 444 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/90.0.4430.85 Safari/537.36 Edg/90.0.818.46"
112.46.212.124 - - [10/Jul/2025:10:47:10 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 400 150 "-" "-"
195.3.221.137 - - [10/Jul/2025:10:48:48 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 444 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0"
93.174.93.12 - - [10/Jul/2025:11:02:39 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 444 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/75.0.3770.142 Safari/537.36 OPR/62.0.3331.116"
[10/Jul/2025:11:13:01 +0200] - 200 200 - POST https URL.duckdns.org "/api/webhook/8f3ead1e03d4bb35416ac01623212a9e57802b7d7c10a59a764cd07345509a2e" [Client 79.211.179.111] [Length 10001] [Gzip -] [Sent-to homeassistant] "Home Assistant/2025.6.6-16662 (Android 16; Pixel 8)" "-"
[10/Jul/2025:11:13:02 +0200] - 200 200 - POST https URL.duckdns.org "/api/webhook/8f3ead1e03d4bb35416ac01623212a9e57802b7d7c10a59a764cd07345509a2e" [Client 79.211.179.111] [Length 34] [Gzip -] [Sent-to homeassistant] "Home Assistant/2025.6.6-16662 (Android 16; Pixel 8)" "-"
[7/10/2025] [11:17:21 AM] [Nginx    ] › ⬤  debug     Deleting file: /config/nginx/proxy_host/2.conf
[7/10/2025] [11:17:21 AM] [Global   ] › ⬤  debug     CMD: /usr/sbin/nginx -t -g "error_log off;"
[7/10/2025] [11:17:21 AM] [Nginx    ] › ℹ  info      Reloading Nginx
[7/10/2025] [11:17:21 AM] [Global   ] › ⬤  debug     CMD: /usr/sbin/nginx -s reload
[7/10/2025] [11:17:23 AM] [Global   ] › ⬤  debug     CMD: /usr/sbin/nginx -t -g "error_log off;"
[7/10/2025] [11:17:23 AM] [Nginx    ] › ⬤  debug     Deleting file: /config/nginx/proxy_host/2.conf
[7/10/2025] [11:17:23 AM] [Nginx    ] › ⬤  debug     Could not delete file: {
  "errno": -2,
  "code": "ENOENT",
  "syscall": "unlink",
  "path": "/config/nginx/proxy_host/2.conf"
}

[IronButterfly]

The same story.

[Safislab777]

same here, stuck on this error.

[Stratos007]

Exactly the same problem here. Reverse proxy does not work to access Home Assistant OS remotely

[tciprop]

Same here. NPM still runs. Perhaps log will continue to grow. Tried changing user to root root in /etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager but reverted on restart.

[deisi]

I think the issue is related to this:

addon-nginx-proxy-manager/proxy-manager/Dockerfile

Line 79 in 14f03e7

&& sed -i "s#user npm;#user root;#" /etc/nginx/nginx.conf \

Here we see that in the config of the nginx the user npm get replaced by root. Looking at: https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-nginx-proxy-manager/blob/main/proxy-manager/patches/0002-Patch-redirect-logs-to-docker-output.patch it looks like the logs of the container should not end up /data/logs/*.log anyways so it might be save to just ignore this message. I would assume that log file cant grow even with this error message present. Fixing it is likely a cosmetic fix.

Digging into proxy manager itself I find:
https://github.com/NginxProxyManager/nginx-proxy-manager/blob/487fa6d31b10bf168b8654d698e5d36ee40f2f40/docker/rootfs/etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager#L4

This looks like the user npm is hard coded here. Thus to get rid of this message I would need to create a patch similar to:
https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-nginx-proxy-manager/blob/main/proxy-manager/patches/0002-Patch-redirect-logs-to-docker-output.patch where the npm user gets replaced by root.

@frenck any issues with my giving it a try and create 0007th patch for this, or is there a better way? Maybe it can also be done within the dockerfile it self. Is there a preferred solution?

[tciprop]

I believe I have resolved this but don't know if my fix causes security issues.
I've been experimenting in Home Assistant my using a cloned copy of my fork.

I've added file nginx-proxy-manager-experimental\rootfs\etc\logrotate.d\nginx-proxy-manager. The logrotate.d directory is only created on starting the container in original repository.

The file reads:
/data/logs/_access.log /data/logs//access.log {
su root root
create 0640 root root
missingok
rotate 12
weekly
compress
delaycompress
sharedscripts
postrotate
nginx -s reopen
endscript
}

/data/logs/_error.log /data/logs//error.log {
su root root
create 0640 root root
missingok
rotate 12
weekly
compress
delaycompress
sharedscripts
postrotate
nginx -s reopen
endscript
}

This removes the startup error. Logrotate runs successfully.
Am I missing why this hasn't been done before?

[duczz]

Thanks @tciprop tobfix that Problem 👍🏻
Maybe you can Check also? 🙈 #663

[github-actions]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently, so we clean up some of the older and inactive issues.
Please make sure to update to the latest version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by leaving a comment 👍
This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thanks!

[tciprop]

The Official version of NPM add-on still doesn't have functioning logrotate:

[11/20/2025] [4:13:32 PM] [Setup ] › ℹ info Logrotate Timer initialized
[11/20/2025] [4:13:32 PM] [Global ] › ⬤ debug CMD: logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager
[11/20/2025] [4:13:32 PM] [Setup ] › ⚠ warning CommandError: error: /etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager:2 unknown user 'npm'
error: found error in /data/logs/_access.log /data/logs//access.log , skipping
error: /etc/logrotate.d/nginx-proxy-manager:16 unknown user 'npm'
error: found error in /data/logs/_error.log /data/logs//error.log , skipping
at /opt/nginx-proxy-manager/lib/utils.js:16:13
at ChildProcess.exithandler (node:child_process:421:5)
at ChildProcess.emit (node:events:518:28)
at maybeClose (node:internal/child_process:1101:16)
at ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:304:5)

My unofficial fork/branch at https://github.com/tciprop/addon-nginx-proxy-manager/tree/logrotate_issue solves this issue.