Wiki source code of How to setup an XWiki docker container

Version 11.1 by Alexandru Pentilescu on 2022/06/08 21:18

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1.1	1	This page will give detailed information on how to setup a docker container for a XWiki server on a linux machine that you have administrative privileges on. This guide will allow you to accomplish such a setup in a straight-forward way.
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	3	But first, the following assumptions must be true:
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	5	* You have sudo rights on the machine where you're trying to install the XWiki server on
	6	* This machine already has docker fully installed and properly configured on it. Please perform a test installation of any random image from docker hub to ensure that everything works appropriately
	7	* You already own and are in control of a domain name for which you wish to make the XWiki server accessible through. This domain name is already pre-configured to point to the server that you wish to install XWiki on. In my particular case, I already have pentilescu.com configured to point to my VPS and, what I wished to accomplish was to have a subdomain via which I could access XWiki. In this particular case, this subdomain was wiki.pentilescu.com. To that end, you must have nginx also configured and running on the same server in the background, to have it redirect connections whose destination is a specific port to a subdomain
	8	* Finally, you must have an SMTP email server running somewhere accessible to the docker instance. XWiki will need to use this server to relay account activation emails as well as password reset emails to its users
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	10	With all of these details in mind, let's begin!
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	12	----
	13
	14
	15	= Configuring an appropriate docker-compose setup =
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2.1	17	On the machine you wish to run the docker instance on, please go to a directory where you have write access to and make a directory specifically for the docker files that XWiki and its database will write all of their persistent data to. In my particular case, I went to "/home/alex/Scripts/" and created an empty "xwiki" directory in it. The exact location of this directory is not particularly important but, if you do regular backups of your machine and you wish for all the XWiki data to also be backed up by these processes, keep in mind to create this folder in a location that's being backed up by your preferred solution, as this directory will contain all the database and XWiki pages that you will be creating, including all attachments uploaded by your users.
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	19	Afterwards, in this newly created directory, please create the following empty subdirectory: mariadb
	20	This subdirectory will contain the contents of two configuration files that will later be mapped by docker into the XWiki containers. After creating the "mariadb" directory, cd into it and then run the following bash command in it:
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	22	{{code language="bash"}}
	23	wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xwiki-contrib/docker-xwiki/master/14/mariadb-tomcat/mariadb/init.sql
	24	wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xwiki-contrib/docker-xwiki/master/14/mariadb-tomcat/mariadb/xwiki.cnf
	25	{{/code}}
	26
	27	PLEASE NOTE: THE ABOVE LINKS MAY BE OUTDATED. Please click [[here>>https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-docker/blob/master/README.md#for-mysql-on-tomcat]] to find a most likely more up to date version of those links
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	29	Finally, once both of those files are downloaded, please proceed to cd back into the parent directory (which is "xwiki" in my case) and then create a docker-compose.yml file with the following contents:
	30
	31	{{code language="yaml"}}
	32	# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
	33	# See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional
	34	# information regarding copyright ownership.
	35	#
	36	# This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
	37	# under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
	38	# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of
	39	# the License, or (at your option) any later version.
	40	#
	41	# This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
	42	# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
	43	# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
	44	# Lesser General Public License for more details.
	45	#
	46	# You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
	47	# License along with this software; if not, write to the Free
	48	# Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
	49	# 02110-1301 USA, or see the FSF site: http://www.fsf.org.
	50	# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
	51	version: '2'
	52	networks:
	53	bridge:
	54	driver: bridge
	55	services:
	56	# The container that runs XWiki + Tomcat
	57	web:
	58	image: "xwiki:lts-mariadb-tomcat"
	59	container_name: xwiki-mariadb-tomcat-web
	60	depends_on:
	61	- db
	62	ports:
	63	- "8081:8080"
	64	# Default values defined in .env file.
	65	# The DB_USER/DB_PASSWORD/DB_DATABASE/DB_HOST variables are used in the hibernate.cfg.xml file.
	66	environment:
	67	- XWIKI_VERSION=${XWIKI_VERSION}
	68	- DB_USER=${DB_USER}
	69	- DB_PASSWORD=${DB_PASSWORD}
	70	- DB_DATABASE=${DB_DATABASE}
	71	- DB_HOST=xwiki-mariadb-db
	72	# Provide a name instead of an auto-generated id for xwiki data (the permanent directory in included in it)
	73	# configured in the Dockerfile, to make it simpler to identify in 'docker volume ls'.
	74	volumes:
	75	- ./data/xwiki-data:/usr/local/xwiki
	76	networks:
	77	internal_xwiki_network:
	78	ipv4_address: 192.168.80.3
	79	# The container that runs the database (mariadb)
	80	db:
	81	image: "mariadb:10.5"
	82	container_name: xwiki-mariadb-db
	83	# - We provide a xwiki.cnf file in order to configure the mysql db to support UTF8 and be case-insensitive
	84	# We have to do it here since we use an existing image and that's how this image allows customizations.
	85	# See https://hub.docker.com/_/mariadb/ for more details.
	86	# - Provide a name instead of an auto-generated id for the mariadb data, to make it simpler to identify in
	87	# 'docker volume ls'
	88	volumes:
	89	- ./mariadb/xwiki.cnf:/etc/mysql/conf.d/xwiki.cnf
	90	- ./data/mariadb-data:/var/lib/mysql
	91	- ./mariadb/init.sql:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init.sql
	92
	93	# Configure the MariaDB database and create a user with provided name/password.
	94	# See https://hub.docker.com/_/mariadb/ for more details.
	95	# Default values defined in .env file.
	96	environment:
	97	- MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
	98	- MYSQL_USER=${DB_USER}
	99	- MYSQL_PASSWORD=${DB_PASSWORD}
	100	- MYSQL_DATABASE=${DB_DATABASE}
	101	networks:
	102	internal_xwiki_network:
	103	ipv4_address: 192.168.80.4
	104
	105	networks:
	106	internal_xwiki_network:
	107	driver: bridge
	108	ipam:
	109	driver: default
	110	config:
	111	- subnet: 192.168.80.0/24
	112	{{/code}}
	113
	114	There are many different configurations you can use to have an XWiki server. For one, mariadb is NOT required to install XWiki, it's simply one of many database solutions that XWiki is compatible with. Alternatively, you may use MySQL or even PostgreSQL, instead. To see docker-compose configuration options for those, please reference the full official docker reference guide for XWiki at the "External references" section of this page for more details. Keep in mind, though, in case you do decide to use an alternative to mariadb, to download a different init.sql file than the one mentioned in the previous step!
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3.1	116	Finally, in the current directory that you are in, please create another subdirectory called "data" containing the empty subdirectories "mariadb-data" and "xwiki-data". The mariadb-data directory will contain all the persistent data from the database and the xwiki-data will contain the persistent data with respect to our XWiki installation, such as XWiki extensions, icons, as well as user-uploaded attachments.
2.1	117
3.1	118	One last note: the subnet 192.168.80.x IP address space configured for our docker network may be changed to whatever suits your particular needs, although, if you do use a different IP space, please keep in mind to also change the reference "mynetworks" configuration for postfix accordingly, as explained in the "Configuring Postfix to send XWiki emails" section of this page.
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4.1	120	Now, all we need to do is create a ".env" file in the main directory ("xwiki" is the name of my directory) containing the following contents:
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	122	{{code language="ini"}}
	123	DB_USER=xwiki
	124	DB_PASSWORD=<database_password>
	125	MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=<mysql_root_password>
	126	DB_DATABASE=xwiki
	127	XWIKI_VERSION=1.0
	128	{{/code}}
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5.1	130	Please replace <database_password> and <mysql_root_password> with randomly generated long strings, preferrably containing a long sequence of lowercase, uppercase letters, digits and symbols. In my case, I chose 12 character long sequences for each of them. It's unlikely for a hacker to compromise your docker environment but it's still best practice to make the passwords as long and hard to guess as possible, as an extra layer of security.
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6.1	132
9.1	133	= First run of the container =
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6.1	135	The first run is always the scariest. Start up the docker image and wait for everything to initialize:
8.1	136
6.1	137	{{code language="bash"}}
	138	docker-compose up -d
	139	{{/code}}
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9.1	141	If you followed along just the way I described in this article, you shouldn't have any problems with this step. Note that XWiki takes a significant amount of time to initialize, around 10 minutes.
	142
	143	Take your time and don't rush!
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10.1	145	When you want to see the status of your installation, visit the domain name pointing to your server at port 8081. In my case, I would visit http://pentilescu.com:8081/
9.1	146
11.1	147	You might see a page indicating that XWiki is initializing, as well as a percentage counter indicating its progress. Let the server finish doing its thing.
	148
	149	In the end, you should see an image like the one below:
	150
	151	[[image:example.jpg]]
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2.1	153	= External references =
5.1	154
2.1	155	[[Official docker guide for installing XWiki>>https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-docker/blob/master/README.md]]