Install with Docker

Any questions, problems or suggestions with this guide? Ask a question in our community or contribute the change yourself at https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow/-/tree/develop/docs .

Docker version 19.03 is the minimum required to use Baserow. It is strongly advised however that you install the latest version of Docker available. Please check that your docker is up-to date by running docker -v.

This guide assumes you already have Docker installed and have permissions to run Docker containers. See the Install on Ubuntu for an installation from scratch.

Quick Start

Run the command below to start a Baserow server running locally listening on port 80. You will only be able to connect to Baserow from the machine running the server via http://localhost.

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=http://localhost \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

Change BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL to https://YOUR_DOMAIN or http://YOUR_IP to enable external access.
Add -e BASEROW_CADDY_ADDRESSES=https://YOUR_DOMAIN to enable automatic Caddy HTTPS .
Optionally add -e DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:pwd@host:port/db to use an external Postgresql.
Optionally add -e REDIS_URL=redis://user:pwd@host:port to use an external Redis.

There is a security flaw with docker and the ufw firewall. By default docker when exposing ports on 0.0.0.0 will bypass any ufw firewall rules and expose the above container publicly from your machine on its network. If this is not intended then run with the following ports instead: -p 127.0.0.1:80:80 -p 127.0.0.1:443:443 which makes your Baserow only accessible from the machine it is running on. Please see https://github.com/chaifeng/ufw-docker for more information and how to setup ufw to work securely with docker.

Image Feature Overview

The baserow/baserow:1.10.1 image by default runs all of Baserow's various services in a single container for ease of use. A quick summary of its features are:

Runs a Postgres database and Redis server by default internally and stores all data in the /baserow/data folder inside the container.
Set DATABASE_URL or the DATABASE_... variables to disable the internal postgres and instead connect to an external Postgres.
Set REDIS_URL or the REDIS_... variables to disable the internal redis and instead connect to an external Postgres.
Runs all services behind a pre-configured Caddy reverse proxy. Set BASEROW_CADDY_ADDRESSES to https://YOUR_DOMAIN.com and it will automaticly enable https for you and store the keys and certs in /baserow/data/caddy.
Provides a CLI for execing admin commands against a running Baserow container or running one off commands against just a Baserow data volume.

Upgrading from a previous version

It is recommended that you backup your data before upgrading, see the Backup sections below for more details on how to do this.
Stop your existing Baserow container:

docker stop baserow

Bump the image version in the docker run command you usually use to run your Baserow and start up a brand-new container:

# We haven't yet deleted the old Baserow container so you need to start this new one
# with a different name to prevent an error like:
# `response from daemon: Conflict. The container name "/baserow" is already in use by 
# container` 

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow_version_REPLACE_WITH_NEW_VERSION \
  # YOUR STANDARD ARGS HERE
  baserow/baserow:REPLACE_WITH_LATEST_VERSION

Baserow will automatically upgrade itself on startup, follow the logs to monitor it:

docker logs -f baserow_version_REPLACE_WITH_NEW_VERSION

Once you see the following log line your Baserow upgraded and is now available again:

[BASEROW-WATCHER][2022-05-10 08:44:46] Baserow is now available at ...

Make sure your Baserow has been successfully upgraded by visiting it and checking everything is working as expected and your data is still present.
If everything works you can now remove the old Baserow container.

WARNING: If you have not been using a volume to persist the /baserow/data folder inside the container this will delete all of your Baserow data stored in this container permanently.

docker rm baserow

Example Commands

See Configuring Baserow for more detailed information on all the other environment variables you can configure.

Using a Domain with automatic https

If you have a domain name and have correctly configured DNS then you can run the following command to make Baserow available at the domain with automatic https provided by Caddy.

Append ,http://localhost to BASEROW_CADDY_ADDRESSES if you still want to be able to access your server from the machine it is running on using http://localhost. See Caddy's Address Docs for all supported values for BASEROW_CADDY_ADDRESSES.

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=https://www.REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_DOMAIN.com \
  -e BASEROW_CADDY_ADDRESSES=https://www.REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_DOMAIN.com \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

Behind a reverse proxy already handling ssl

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=https://www.yourdomain.com \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

On a nonstandard HTTP port

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=https://www.yourdomain.com:3001 \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 3001:80 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

With an external PostgresSQL server

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=https://www.yourdomain.com \
  -e DATABASE_HOST=TODO \
  -e DATABASE_NAME=TODO \
  -e DATABASE_USER=TODO \
  -e DATABASE_PASSWORD=TODO \
  -e DATABASE_PORT=TODO \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

With an external Redis server

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=https://www.yourdomain.com \
  -e REDIS_HOST=TODO \
  -e REDIS_USER=TODO \
  -e REDIS_PASSWORD=TODO \
  -e REDIS_PORT=TODO \
  -e REDIS_PROTOCOL=TODO \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

With an external email server

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=https://www.yourdomain.com \
  -e EMAIL_SMTP=True \
  -e EMAIL_SMTP_HOST=TODO \
  -e EMAIL_SMTP_PORT=TODO \
  -e EMAIL_SMTP_USER=TODO \
  -e EMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD=TODO \
  -e EMAIL_SMTP_USE_TLS= \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

With a Postgresql server running on the same host as the Baserow docker container

This is assuming you are using the postgresql server bundled by ubuntu. If not then you will have to find the correct locations for the config files for your OS.

Find out what version of postgresql is installed by running sudo ls /etc/postgresql/
Open /etc/postgresql/YOUR_PSQL_VERSION/main/postgresql.conf for editing as root
Find the commented out # listen_addresses line.
Change it to be: listen_addresses = '*' # what IP address(es) to listen on;
Open /etc/postgresql/YOUR_PSQL_VERSION/main/pg_hba.conf for editing as root
Add the following line to the end which will allow docker containers to connect. host all all 172.17.0.0/16 md5
Restart postgres to load in the config changes. sudo systemctl restart postgresql
Check the logs do not have errors by running sudo less /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-YOUR_PSQL_VERSION-main.log
Run Baserow like so:

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  --add-host host.docker.internal:host-gateway \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=http://localhost \
  -e DATABASE_HOST=host.docker.internal \
  -e DATABASE_PORT=5432 \
  -e DATABASE_NAME=YOUR_DATABASE_NAME \
  -e DATABASE_USER=YOUR_DATABASE_USERNAME \
  -e DATABASE_PASSWORD=REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_DATABASE_PASSWORD \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

Supply secrets using files

The DATABASE_PASSWORD, SECRET_KEY and REDIS_PASSWORD environment variables can instead be loaded using a file by using the *_FILE variants:

echo "your_redis_password" > .your_redis_password
echo "your_secret_key" > .your_secret_key
echo "your_pg_password" > .your_pg_password
docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=http://localhost \
  -e REDIS_PASSWORD_FILE=/baserow/.your_redis_password \
  -e SECRET_KEY_FILE=/baserow/.your_secret_key \
  -e DATABASE_PASSWORD_FILE=/baserow/.your_pg_password \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -v $PWD/.your_redis_password:/baserow/.your_redis_password \
  -v $PWD/.your_secret_key:/baserow/.your_secret_key \
  -v $PWD/.your_pg_password:/baserow/.your_pg_password \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

Start just the embedded database

If you want to directly access the embedded Postgresql database then you can run:

docker run -it \
  --rm \
  --name baserow \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1 \
  start-only-db 
# Now get the password from
docker exec -it baserow cat /baserow/data/.pgpass
# Finally connect on your host machine to the Baserow postgres database at port 5432
# the password above with the username `baserow`.

Run a one off command on the database

If you want to run a one off backend command against your Baserow data volume without starting Baserow normally you can do so with the backend-cmd-with-db argument like so:

docker run -it \
  --rm \
  --name baserow \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1 \
  backend-cmd-with-db manage dbshell

Backing up and Restoring Baserow

Baserow stores all of its persistent data in the /baserow/data directory by default. We strongly recommend you mount a docker volume into this location to persist Baserows data so you do not lose it if you accidentally delete your Baserow container.

The backup and restore operations discussed below are best done on a Baserow server which is not being used.

Backup all of Baserow

This will backup:

Baserows postgres database (This will be a raw copy of the PGDATA dir and hence not easily portable, see the section below on how to backup just the postgres db in a more portable way.)
The Caddy config and data, this will include any runtime config changes you might have made to the caddy server and any SSL certificates/keys automatically setup by Caddy.
The Redis servers state. This is not strictly needed.

Otherwise if you remove the Baserow container you will lose all of your data.

The command below assumes you have been running Baserow with the -v baserow_data:/baserow/data volume. Please change this argument accordingly if you have mounted the /baserow/data folder differently.

# Ensure Baserow is stopped first before taking a backup.
docker stop baserow
docker run --rm -v baserow_data:/baserow/data -v $PWD:/backup ubuntu tar cvf /backup/backup.tar /baserow/data

Restore all of Baserow

# Ensure Baserow is stopped first before taking a backup.
docker stop baserow
docker run --rm -v baserow_data:/baserow/data -v $PWD:/backup ubuntu tar cvf /backup/backup.tar /baserow/data
docker run --rm -v new_baserow_data_volume $PWD:/backup ubuntu bash -c "mkdir -p /baserow/data && cd /baserow/data && tar xvf /backup/backup.tar --strip 1"

Backup only Baserow's Postgres database

Please ensure you only back-up a Baserow database which is not actively being used by a running Baserow instance or any other process which is making changes to the database.

Baserow stores all of its own data in Postgres. To backup just this database you can run the command below.

# First read the help message for this command
docker run -it --rm -v baserow_data:/baserow/data baserow/baserow:1.10.1 \
   backend-cmd-with-db backup

# By default backs up to the backups folder in the baserow_data volume.
docker run -it --rm -v baserow_data:/baserow/data baserow/baserow:1.10.1 \
   backend-cmd-with-db backup -f /baserow/data/backups/backup.tar.gz

# Or backup to a file on your host instead run something like:
docker run -it --rm -v baserow_data:/baserow/data -v $PWD:/baserow/host \
   baserow/baserow:1.10.1 backend-cmd-with-db backup -f /baserow/host/backup.tar.gz

Restore only Baserow's Postgres Database

When restoring Baserow you must ensure you are restoring into a brand new Baserow data volume.

docker run -it --rm \
  -v old_baserow_data_volume_containing_the_backup_tar_gz:/baserow/old_data \
  -v new_baserow_data_volume_to_restore_into:/baserow/data \
  baserow backend-cmd-with-db restore -f /baserow/old_data/backup.tar.gz 

# Or to restore from a file on your host instead run something like:
docker run -it --rm \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data -v \
  $(pwd):/baserow/host \
  baserow backend-cmd-with-db restore -f /baserow/host/backup.tar.gz

Running healthchecks on Baserow

The Dockerfile already defines a HEALTHCHECK command which will be used by software that supports it. However if you wish to trigger a healthcheck yourself on a running Baserow container then you can run:

docker exec baserow ./baserow.sh backend-cmd backend-healthcheck
# Run the below to see all available healthchecks
docker exec baserow ./baserow.sh backend-cmd help

Running Baserow or Django management commands

You can run management commands on an existing Baserow container called baserow by running the following to see the available commands:

docker exec baserow ./baserow.sh backend-cmd manage 
# For example you could migrate the database of a running Baserow using:
docker exec baserow ./baserow.sh backend-cmd manage migrate

Customizing Baserow

Mounting in a config file

Baserow will automatically source any .sh files found in /baserow/supervisor/env/ or /baserow/data/env/ on startup. Use this to create a single config file to configure your Baserow like so:

custom_baserow_conf.sh << EOF
export BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=todo
export BASEROW_CADDY_ADDRESSES=todo

# You can perform any Bash logic required in here to setup Baserow conditionally.
EOF

docker run \
  -d \
  --name baserow \
  -e BASEROW_PUBLIC_URL=http://localhost \
  -v $PWD/custom_baserow_conf.sh /baserow/supervisor/custom_baserow_conf.sh \
  -v baserow_data:/baserow/data \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 443:443 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  baserow/baserow:1.10.1

Or you can just store it directly in the volume at baserow_data/env meaning it will be loaded whenever you mount in this data volume.

Building your own image from Baserow

FROM baserow/baserow:1.10.1

# Any .sh files found in /baserow/supervisor/env/ will be sourced and loaded at startup
# useful for storing your own environment variable overrides.
COPY custom_env.sh /baserow/supervisor/env/custom_env.sh

# Set the DATA_DIR environment variable to change where Baserow stores its persistant 
# data. At startup Baserow will attempt to chown and setup this folder correctly.
ENV DATA_DIR=/baserow/data

# This image bakes in its own default user with UID/GID of 9999:9999 by default. To
# Set this to change the user Baserow will run its Caddy, backend, Celery and 
# web-frontend services as. However be warned, the default entrypoint needs to be run 
# as root so using USER may break things.
ENV DOCKER_USER=baserow_docker_user

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install-with-docker.md

install-with-docker.md

Install with Docker

Quick Start

Image Feature Overview

Upgrading from a previous version

Example Commands

Using a Domain with automatic https

Behind a reverse proxy already handling ssl

On a nonstandard HTTP port

With an external PostgresSQL server

With an external Redis server

With an external email server

With a Postgresql server running on the same host as the Baserow docker container

Supply secrets using files

Start just the embedded database

Run a one off command on the database

Backing up and Restoring Baserow

Backup all of Baserow

Restore all of Baserow

Backup only Baserow's Postgres database

Restore only Baserow's Postgres Database

Running healthchecks on Baserow

Running Baserow or Django management commands

Customizing Baserow

Mounting in a config file

Building your own image from Baserow

Files

install-with-docker.md

Latest commit

History

install-with-docker.md

File metadata and controls

Install with Docker

Quick Start

Image Feature Overview

Upgrading from a previous version

Example Commands

Using a Domain with automatic https

Behind a reverse proxy already handling ssl

On a nonstandard HTTP port

With an external PostgresSQL server

With an external Redis server

With an external email server

With a Postgresql server running on the same host as the Baserow docker container

Supply secrets using files

Start just the embedded database

Run a one off command on the database

Backing up and Restoring Baserow

Backup all of Baserow

Restore all of Baserow

Backup only Baserow's Postgres database

Restore only Baserow's Postgres Database

Running healthchecks on Baserow

Running Baserow or Django management commands

Customizing Baserow

Mounting in a config file

Building your own image from Baserow