1. Installation

This installation walks you through installing Bookstack on a machine that already runs docker. This could be a VM or a dedicated bare metal machine. Hence, it is assumed that you run a machine where docker is already installed with a fixed private IPv4 address attached to it.

1. The first thing I like to do is setup my reverse proxy to point to the VM or server that the application will be hosted on. I use the Caddy reverse proxy plugin created for my OPNSense firewall. This is extremely simple for a home lab since it provides a great WebGui and it is all handled on my router instead of on my servers. You can of course choose your own port but in this case I setup the following Caddy entry

2. The next thing we need to do is create an APP_KEY. So what is that ? Well The APP_KEY in Bookstack is used for session encryption and security purposes, ensuring that sensitive data is protected during user sessions. It is a unique key that helps secure the application against various types of attacks. For this enter your docker machine and generate the key with

docker run -it --rm --entrypoint /bin/bash lscr.io/linuxserver/bookstack:latest appkey

3. If run correctly it will spit out an APP_KEY in the following format

base64:A8PyIIbsR8FZT+5F6QoZYVQesoJvJ0rsP3LXyzGdhHg=

4. Copy the APP_KEY including the base64 to a place that you can retrieve it from again later.

5. I assume that you have a dedicated docker folder in which you keep all your docker projects. If not you can create it with the following code below that will create a docker folder and inside it a bookstack folder.

mkdir -p docker/bookstack

6. Enter the docker/bookstack folder and create a new docker compose file with 

nano compose.yml

7. Then copy paste the boilerplate below inside of it.

Docker Compose File
services:
  # The container for BookStack itself
  bookstack:
    # You should update the version here to match the latest
    # release of BookStack: https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/releases
    # You'll change this when wanting to update the version of BookStack used.
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/bookstack:version-v26.03.3
    container_name: bookstack
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      # APP_URL must be set as the base URL you'd expect to access BookStack
      # on via the browser. The default shown here is what you might use if accessing
      # direct from the browser on the docker host, hence the use of the port as configured below.
      - APP_URL=https://docs.rfeyn.org
      # APP_KEY must be a unique key. Generate your own by running
      # docker run -it --rm --entrypoint /bin/bash lscr.io/linuxserver/bookstack:latest appkey
      # You should keep the "base64:" part for the option value.
      - APP_KEY=base64:XSuNYw6vfOmXJ3kZfaloEVNE39BEClMrDXOlc2TIGT8=
      # The below database details are purposefully aligned with those
      # configured for the "mariadb" service below:
      - DB_HOST=mariadb
      - DB_PORT=3306
      - DB_DATABASE=sdf092jefjsdlkfj203fjlksdjfdsf
      - DB_USERNAME=9823fj98fj32jf0sjodfijsdf
      - DB_PASSWORD=j2j93jfjsodiifj023jf8349j93jfksjdfdf
    volumes:
      # You generally only ever need to map this one volume.
      # This maps it to a "bookstack_app_data" folder in the same
      # directory as this compose config file.
      - ./bookstack_app_data:/config
    ports:
      # This exposes port 6875 for general web access.
      # Commonly you'd have a reverse proxy in front of this,
      # redirecting incoming requests to this port.
      - 6875:80
    restart: unless-stopped
  # The container for the database which BookStack will use to store
  # most of its core data/content.
  mariadb:
    # You should update the version here to match the latest
    # main version of the linuxserver mariadb container version:
    # https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-mariadb/pkgs/container/mariadb/versions?filters%5Bversion_type%5D=tagged
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/mariadb:11.4.9
    container_name: bookstack_mariadb
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      # You may want to change the credentials used below,
      # but be aware the latter three options need to align
      # with the DB_* options for the BookStack container.
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=sdfjop2fjisodifj203f9j0jfsklfjls
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=sdf092jefjsdlkfj203fjlksdjfdsf
      - MYSQL_USER=9823fj98fj32jf0sjodfijsdf
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=j2j93jfjsodiifj023jf8349j93jfksjdfdf
    volumes:
      # You generally only ever need to map this one volume.
      # This maps it to a "bookstack_db_data" folder in the same
      # directory as this compose config file.
      # If you're hosting this stack on Windows, you may instead need to
      # use a named docker volume instead of a local path due to
      # filesystem issues causing problems with local mounts on Windows.
      - ./bookstack_db_data:/config
    # These ports are commented out as you don't really need this port
    # exposed for normal use, mainly only if connecting direct the the
    # database externally. Otherwise, this risks exposing access to the
    # database when not needed.
    # ports:
    #   - 3306:3306
    restart: unless-stopped

8. What is important to change in your docker compose file from the boiler plate is the following

If these are all changed then you are ready to run the application inside of the folder where the docker compose file is stored with docker compose up. I like to use docker compose up instead of docker compose up -d on the first run to see if the logs give any errors. Then you can directly fix what's wrong ;)

docker compose up

9. If the DNS and reverse proxy are set correctly you should now be able to launch your bookstack instance at https://docs.example.org

10. The first time login requires the following credentials

11. After Login I would recommend to directly change your username and password and save the credentials in an open source password manager like Vaultwarden.

Revision #3
Created 2026-07-05 21:56:15 UTC by dpasn
Updated 2026-07-24 16:02:44 UTC by dpasn