I never understood how to use Docker, what makes it so special? I would really like to use it on my Rapsberry Pi 3 Model B+ to ease the setup process of selfhosting different things.
I’m currently running these things without Docker:
- Mumble server with a Discord bridge and a music bot
- Maubot, a plugin-based Matrix bot
- FTP server
- Two Discord Music bots
All of these things are running as systemd services in the background. Should I change this? A lot of the things I’m hosting offer Docker images.
It would also be great if someone could give me a quick-start guide for Docker. Thanks in advance!
Docker Compose is basically designed to bring up a tech stack on one machine. So rather than having an Apache machine, a MySQL machine, and a Redis machine, you set up a Docker Compose file with all of those services. It’s easier than using individual Docker commands too. It sets up a network so they can all talk to each other, then opens the ports you tell it to. It’s isolated from other Docker Compose networks, so things won’t interfere with each other. So you can basically isolate a bunch of services with their own tech stacks all on the same machine. I’ve got my Jellyfin server running on the same machine as my Mastodon instance, thanks to Docker Compose.
As long as Docker is configured to run automatically at boot (which it usually is when you install it), it will bring containers back up that are set to be restarted. You can use the “always” or the “unless-stopped” values for the restart option, depending on your needs, then Docker will bring that container back up after a reboot.
Docker Compose is also useful in this context, because you can define dependencies for services. So I can say that the Mastodon container depends on the Postgres container, and Docker Compose will always start the Postgres container first.