home-lab/docker/dockge.md

Dockge

To manage our containers, we'll rely on docker compose and use Dockge to manage those composes or "stacks". Dockge is lightweight, doesn't use any databases and relies solely on compose.yaml files. This gives me the opportunity to better learn to design and understand Docker components without abstracting them away. It also stores all compose files locally in plaintext which helps if I ever want to migrate away from Dockge.

Setup

We'll create a dedicated folder for Dockge inside our directory dedicated to Docker containers:

mkdir -p /opt/appdata/dockge
cd /opt/appdata/dockge

Next we'll define its compose.yaml file.

nano compose.yaml

And paste the following into it:

services:
  dockge:
    image: louislam/dockge:1
    container_name: dockge
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "5001:5001"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - /opt/appdata/dockge/data:/app/data
      - /opt/appdata:/opt/appdata # Mount our directory for Docker containers data
    environment:
        # Where to create our stacks
      - DOCKGE_STACKS_DIR=/opt/appdata

Finally, we start Dockge (in detached mode):

docker compose up -d

From now on, this should be about the only time we'll directly use docker compose in the CLI.