New Docker app

LochNAS is based on Docker Compose. You can add your own Docker images and have them run on startup.

This guide assumes that you know how to use Docker Compose (docker-compose.yml files) and that you have a Docker image in mind. My imaginary example is MyCoolApp which is (not actually) hosted on Dockerhub https://hub.docker.com/r/silocitylabs/mycoolapp

Docker #

To add a new application to LochNAS, create a new directory under /lochnas/docker-templates/ like /lochnas/docker-templates/mycoolapp.

In that directory create the files docker-compose.yml, .env, and .example.env

Write docker-compose.yml for the image that you want to run. Read the documentation on Docker Hub for your image. Ensure the Docker names are unique and don’t interfere with LochNAS image names. If it uses volumes, map them to /lochnas/docker-data/mycoolapp

Here is a barebones docker-compose.yml

services:
    mycoolapp:
        container_name: mycoolapp
        image: silocitylabs/mycoolapp:latest
        restart: unless-stopped
        volumes:
            - '/etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro'
            - '/etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro'
            - `/lochnas/dock-data/mycoolapp:/opt/mycoolapp/cool-stuff-output`
        env_file:
            - /lochnas/docker-templates/mycoolapp/.env
        networks:
            - backend

The .env file should contain MYCOOLAPP_ENABLED=true. That name needs to match the directory name. When the variable is true, LochNAS will start this docker-compose.yml. The rest of .env can be filled with your application’s environment viarables.

Copy .env to .example.env. Remove any passwords, API keys, etc, so that you can share the example file.

Nginx #

Use Nginx to access the image with a subdomain, like mycoolapp.domain.com. This part of the guide assumes that you already set up a domain and DDNS.

First ensure that Nginx is enabled by editing /lochnas/docker-templates/nginx/.env and setting NGINX_ENABLED=true. Check the Nginx docs

Create a file nginx.conf in /lochnas/docker-templates/mycoolapp. You must write you configuration file from here. You may use ${GLOBAL_DOMAIN} to reference the domain set in /lochnas/config.yml

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name mycoolapp.${GLOBAL_DOMAIN};

Finally run /lochnas/server.bin -domain add mycoolapp.domain.com