I do self-hosted home-lab and smart-home stuff.

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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: December 18th, 2023
  • QantumEntangled@lemmy.ziptoLinux@lemmy.ml•I feel like I'm taking crazy pills
    192·
    10 months ago

    There’s not a fantastic GUI for managing docker. There are a few like dockge (my favorite) or Portainer.

    I recommend spending some time learning docker run with exposed ports, bind volumes (map local folders from your drive to folders inside the container so you can access your files, configs, content, etc. Also so you don’t lose it when you delete the container and pull a newer version).

    Once you’ve done that, check out the spec page for docker-compose.yaml. This is what you’ll eventually want to use to run your apps. It’s a single file that describes all the configuration and details required for multiple docker containers to run in the same environment. ie: postgres version 4.2 with a volume and 1 exposed port, nginx latest version with 2 volumes, 4 mapped ports, a hostname, restart unless-stopped, and running as user 1000:1000, etc.

    I’ve been using docker for home a LIGHT business applications for 8 years now and docker-compose.yaml is really all you need until you start wanting high availability and cloud orchestration.

    Some quick tips though.

    • Search some-FOSS-app-name docker-compose read through a dozen or so templates. Check the spec page to see what most of the terms mean. It’s the best way to learn how to structure your own compose files later.
    • Use other people’s compose.yaml files as templates to start from. Expect to change a few things for your own setup.
    • NEVER use restart: always. Never. Change it to restart: unless-stopped. Nothing is more annoying than stopping an app and having it keep doom spiraling. Especially at boot.
    • Take a minute to set the docker daemon or service to run at boot. It takes 1 google and 30 seconds, but it’ll save you when you drunkenly decide to update your host OS right before bed.
    • Use mapped folders for everything. If you map /srv/dumb-app/data:/data then anything that container saves to the /data folder is accessible to you on your host machine (with whatever user:group is running inside the container, so check that). If you use the docker volumes like EVERYONE seems to like doing, it’s a pain to ever get that data back out if you want to use it outside of docker.