selfhosted-apps-docker/bookstack

Bookstack in docker

guide by example

Purpose & Overview

Documentation and notes.

• Official site
• Github
• DockerHub

BookStack is a modern, open source, good looking wiki platform for storing and organizing information and documentation.

Written in PHP, with MySQL database for the user data.
There is no official Dockerhub image so the one maintained by linuxserver.io is used, which uses nginx as a web server.

Files and directory structure

/home/
└── ~/
    └── docker/
        └── bookstack/
            ├── bookstack-data/
            ├── bookstack-db-data/
            ├── .env
            ├── docker-compose.yml
            └── bookstack-backup-script.sh

• bookstack-data/ - a directory where bookstack will store its web app data
• bookstack-db-data/ - a directory where bookstack will store its MySQL database data
• .env - a file containing environmental variables for docker compose
• docker-compose.yml - a docker compose file, telling docker how to build bookstack container
• bookstack-backup-script.sh - a backup script if you want it

You only need to provide the files.
The directories are created by docker compose on the first run.

docker-compose

Dockerhub linuxserver/bookstack example compose.

docker-compose.yml

version: "2"
services:

  bookstack-db:
    image: linuxserver/mariadb
    container_name: bookstack-db
    hostname: bookstack-db
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file: .env
    volumes:
      - ./bookstack-db-data:/config

  bookstack:
    image: linuxserver/bookstack
    container_name: bookstack
    hostname: bookstack
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file: .env
    depends_on:
      - bookstack-db
    volumes:
      - ./bookstack-data:/config

networks:
  default:
    external:
      name: $DEFAULT_NETWORK

.env

# GENERAL
MY_DOMAIN=blabla.org
DEFAULT_NETWORK=caddy_net
TZ=Europe/Bratislava

#LINUXSERVER.IO
PUID=1000
PGID=1000

# BOOKSTACK-MARIADB
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=bookstack
MYSQL_DATABASE=bookstack
MYSQL_USER=bookstack
MYSQL_PASSWORD=bookstack

# BOOKSTACK
DB_HOST=bookstack-db
DB_USER=bookstack
DB_PASS=bookstack
DB_DATABASE=bookstack

# USING SENDGRID FOR SENDING EMAILS
APP_URL=https://book.blabla.org
MAIL_DRIVER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.sendgrid.net
MAIL_PORT=465
MAIL_FROM=book@blabla.org
MAIL_USERNAME=apikey
MAIL_PASSWORD=SG.2FA24asaddasdasdasdsadasdasdassadDEMBzuh9e43
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=SSL

All containers must be on the same network.
If one does not exist yet: docker network create caddy_net

Reverse proxy

Caddy v2 is used, details here.

Caddyfile

book.{$MY_DOMAIN} {
    reverse_proxy bookstack:80
}

---

Update

• watchtower updates the image automatically

• manual image update
  docker-compose pull
docker-compose up -d
docker image prune

Backup and restore

Backup

Using borg that makes daily snapshot of the entire directory.

Restore

• down the bookstack containers docker-compose down
  
• delete the entire bookstack directory
  
• from the backup copy back the bookstack directory
  
• start the containers docker-compose up -d

Backup of just user data

Users data daily export using the official procedure.
For bookstack it means database dump and backing up several directories containing user uploaded files.

Daily borg run takes care of backing up the directories. So only database dump is needed.
The created backup sqlite3 file is overwritten on every run of the script, but that's ok since borg is making daily snapshots.

Create a backup script

Placed inside bookstack directory on the host

bookstack-backup-script.sh

#!/bin/bash

# CREATE DATABASE DUMP, bash -c '...' IS USED OTHERWISE OUTPUT > WOULD TRY TO GO TO THE HOST
docker container exec bookstack-db bash -c 'mysqldump -u $MYSQL_USER -p$MYSQL_PASSWORD $MYSQL_DATABASE > $MYSQL_DIR/BACKUP.bookstack.database.sql'

the script must be executable - chmod +x bookstack-backup-script.sh

Cronjob

Running on the host, so that the script will be periodically run.

• su - switch to root
• crontab -e - add new cron job
  
• 0 22 * * * /home/bastard/docker/bookstack/bookstack-backup-script.sh
  runs it every day at 22:00
• crontab -l - list cronjobs to check

Restore the user data

Assuming clean start, first restore the database before running the app container.

• start only the database container: docker-compose up -d bookstack-db
• copy BACKUP.bookstack.database.sql in bookstack/bookstack-db-data/
• restore the database inside the container
  docker container exec --workdir /config bookstack-db bash -c 'mysql -u $MYSQL_USER -p$MYSQL_PASSWORD $MYSQL_DATABASE < BACKUP.bookstack.database.sql'
• now start the app container: docker-compose up -d
• let it run so it creates its file structure
• down the containers docker-compose down
• in bookstack/bookstack-data/www/
  replace directories files,images,uploads and the file .env
  with the ones from the BorgBackup repository
• start the containers: docker-compose up -d
• if there was a major version jump, exec in to the app container and run php artisan migrate
docker container exec -it bookstack /bin/bash
cd /var/www/html/
php artisan migrate

Again, the above steps are based on the official procedure.