README.md

   1 ##Discourse Docker
   2
   3 A toolkit for building and managing Docker images for Discourse.
   4
   5 ### About
   6
   7 The Discourse docker templates were designed by Sam Saffron. See the following introduction: http://samsaffron.com/archive/2013/11/07/discourse-in-a-docker-container
   8
   9 These templates are agnostic, you may run Discourse in multiple containers or a single container.
  10
  11 The templates and base image take care of configuring Discourse with best practices in mind. The latest version of Ruby 2.0 is included as is fairly extensive memory and GC tuning. The web template uses unicorn which helps cut down on overall memory usage making this very suitable for VPS type installs.
  12
  13 ### Directory Structure
  14
  15 - cids
  16
  17 Contains container ids for currently running Docker containers. cids are Docker's "equivalent" of pids. Each container will have a unique git like hash.
  18
  19 - containers
  20
  21 This directory is to contain container definitions for your various Discourse containers. You are in charge of this directory, it ships empty.
  22
  23 - samples
  24
  25 Sample container definitions you may use to bootstrap your environment. You can copy and amend templates here into the containers directory.
  26
  27 - shared
  28
  29 Placeholder spot for shared volumes with various Discourse containers. You may elect to store certain persistent information outside of a container, in our case we keep various logfiles and upload directory outside. This allows you to rebuild containers easily without losing important information. Keeping uploads outside of the container allows you to share them between multiple web instances.
  30
  31 - templates
  32
  33 [pups](https://github.com/samsaffron/pups) managed pups templates you may use to bootstrap your environment.
  34
  35 - image
  36
  37 Dockerfile for both the base image `samsaffron/discoruse_base` and discourse image `samsaffron/discourse`.
  38
  39 `samsaffron/discourse_base` contains all the OS dependencies including sshd, runit, postgres, nginx, ruby.
  40
  41 `samsaffron/discourse` builds on the base image and configures a discourse user and `/var/www/discourse` directory for the Discourse source.
  42
  43 The Docker repository will always contain the latest built version at: https://index.docker.io/u/samsaffron/discourse/ , you should not need to build the base image.
  44
  45 ###launcher
  46
  47 The base directory contains a single bash script which is used to manage containers. You can use it to "bootstrap" a new container, ssh in, start, stop and destroy a container.
  48
  49 ```
  50 Usage: launcher COMMAND CONFIG
  51 Commands:
  52     start:      Start/initialize a container
  53     stop:       Stop a running container
  54     restart:    Restart a container
  55     destroy:    Stop and remove a container
  56     ssh:        Start a bash shell in a running container
  57     logs:       Docker logs for container
  58     bootstrap:  Bootstrap a container for the config based on a template
  59 ```
  60
  61 ###Getting started
  62
  63 The simplest (though slightly more fragile) way of getting started is using the standalone template.
  64
  65 - `cp samples/standalone.yml containers/app.yml`
  66 - Edit app.yml with your environment specific information
  67 - `./launcher bootstrap app`
  68 - `./launcher start app`
  69
  70 ###About the container configuration
  71
  72 The beggining of the container definition will contain 3 "special" sections:
  73
  74 - templates:
  75
  76 ```
  77 templates:
  78   - "templates/cron.template.yml"
  79   - "templates/postgres.template.yml"
  80 ```
  81
  82 This template is "composed" out of all these child templates, this allows for a very flexible configuration struture. Further more you may add specific hooks that extend the templates you reference.
  83
  84 - expose:
  85
  86 ```
  87 expose:
  88   - "2222:22"
  89 ```
  90
  91 Expose port 22 inside the container on port 2222 on ALL local host interfaces.
  92
  93
  94 - volumes:
  95
  96 ```
  97 volumes:
  98   - volume:
  99       host: /var/docker/data
 100       guest: /shared
 101
 102 ```
 103
 104 Expose a directory inside the host inside the container.
 105
 106 *short note about security* Directory permissions in Linux are sid based, if your sids on the host do not match the sids in the guest, permissions will mismatch. On clean installs you can ensure they are in sync by looking at `/etc/passwd` and `/etc/group`, the discourse account will have the sid 1000.
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