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
[https://docs.example.org](https://docs.example.org) --> [http://IPv4-](http://IPv4)Address-VM:6875
[https://docs.example.org](https://docs.example.org) A Record ----> Public IP address of Network
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
APP\_URL=https://docs.example.org
APP\_KEY=base64:Xjslkdjf....
DB\_DATABASE=databaseusername
DB\_USERNAME=bookstackusername
DB\_PASSWORD=bookstackpassword
MYSQL\_ROOT\_PASSWORD=randompassword
MYSQL\_DATABASE=databaseusername
MYSQL\_USER=bookstackusername
MYSQL\_PASSWORD=bookstackpassword
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.