Docker Services

All the user-facing services in this lab setup are deployed using Docker Containers.

Docker helps developers build, share, run, and verify applications anywhere — without tedious environment configuration or management.

For additional services to host, check awesome-selfhosted.

Directory structure

• docker – Docker Compose files organized into categories
• config/docker – Host specific service configuration

Host-specific configuration

In the config/docker subfolder multiple Docker hosts can be defined.

Configuration files:

• Host-specific settings: config/docker/<hostname>/.env -> See [Setting Started -> Configure Docker environment files][setup] for more details. (These files are not committed to the repo - backup them separately!)
• Configure which services to start (up function) or stop (down function): config/docker/<hostname>/apply.sh

Services

The applications/services are defined in the docker folder, ordered by category.
If possible, avoid any hardcoded configuration values in these files. Use environment variables and init containers for customization.

Start the services

After configuration, execute on a Docker host to apply the local configuration (based on the hostname): task docker:apply or docker/apply-local.sh

Updates

Updating the container image tags is automated with Renovate.

Check for updates (only useful for containers not having a fixed version tag): task docker:check-updates

Update containers having non-fixed version tags: task docker:update

Tips

Compose

Convert docker run commands to docker compose format:

• Composerize - Online
• Composerize - CLI tool

Monitoring

Use ctop to monitor containers from the command-line.

Copy a Docker image from local machine to a remote host

Prerequisites:

• SSH access: Set up with ssh-copy-id user@remotehost
• Docker group: Both local and remote users must be in the docker group: sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

List images:

docker images

Transfer:

docker save app:1.0 | gzip | DOCKER_HOST=ssh://user@remotehost docker load

Replace user@remotehost as needed. This command saves, compresses, transfers, and loads the image directly on the remote host.

Reference: How to copy Docker images from one host to another without using a repository

Useful Visual Studio Code Extensions

Use the Docker VS Code Extension easy to build, manage, and deploy containerized applications from Visual Studio Code.

Use the Remote - SSH VS Code Extension to work on a remote machine.
Initiate a connection with the “Remote-SSH: Connect to Host” command.
Read more: Remote Development using SSH