ente/server/quickstart/README.md

A variant docker compose file that does not require cloning the repository, and uses pre-built images instead.

Quickstart

Copy paste the following command into your terminal

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ente-io/ente/main/server/quickstart.sh)"

Alternatively, you can run the following four steps manually (that's all the command above does for you):

1. Create a directory on your system and switch to it. You can name it anything, and it can be at any place on your machine. In particular, you don't need to clone this repository.

   mkdir my-ente && cd my-ente
   

Tip

"Ente" (pronounced en-tay) means "mine" in Malayalam, our Founder's mother tongue (the product literally thus means "My Photos"), so our example directory name my-ente would mean to "my-my".

2. Download the sample quickstart Docker compose file.

   curl -fsSOL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ente-io/ente/HEAD/server/quickstart/compose.yaml
   

Caution

The quickstart.sh also updates the default passwords and keys in compose.yaml with new autogenerated ones. If you're doing these steps manually, remember to update the credentials too.

3. Create an empty museum.yaml (you can use it later to put extra config if needed).

   touch museum.yaml
   

4. Start your self hosted instance.

   docker compose up
   

That's it. You can now open http://localhost:3000 in your browser to use Ente's web app.

Details

The quickstart steps above created a Docker compose cluster containing:

• Ente's own server, museum
• Ente's web app
• Postgres (DB)
• Minio (S3 storage)

For each of these, it'll use the latest published Docker image.

You can do a quick smoke test by pinging the API:

curl localhost:8080/ping

And start using the web app by opening http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

The cluster will keep running as long as the docker compose up command (or the quickstart.sh script you curl-ed) is running. If you want to keep it running in the background, you can instead:

cd /path/to/my-ente # Or whichever directory you created
docker compose up -d

And then later, to stop the cluster, you can:

cd /path/to/my-ente
docker compose down

Caveat

This sample setup is only intended to make it easy for people to get started. If you're intending to use your self hosted instance for serious purposes, we strongly recommend understanding all the moving parts. Some particular things to call out:

1. Remember to change all hardcoded credentials.

2. Consider if you should use an external DB or an external S3 instead of the provided quickstart sample.

3. Keep a plaintext backup of your photos until you are sure of what you are doing and have a backup strategy worked out.

Next steps

• Get a login verification code.

• Connect to your self hosted instance from your mobile app.

• Modify your setup to allow uploading from your mobile app.