[Docker](https://www.docker.com/) is a convenient and secure way to install server applications either locally or on a server you control. If you don’t have docker already running on your machine and are macOS user, consider giving [OrbStack](https://orbstack.dev/) a try — it’s a super nice docker experience.
Conveniently, SilverBullet is published as a [docker image on docker hub](https://hub.docker.com/r/zefhemel/silverbullet). The image comes in two flavors:
* 64-bit Intel
* 64-bit ARM (e.g. for Raspberry Pis and Apple Silicon macs)
There is no 32-bit version of Deno, and therefore we cannot offer a 32-bit version of SilverBullet either. Most people run 64-bit OSes these days, an exception may be Raspberry Pis. Recent (RPI 3 and later) can run 64-bit Linux as well, you may have to re-image, though.
A few key things to know about the SilverBullet container image:
* The container binds to port `3000`, so be sure to port-map that, e.g. via `-p 3000:3000` (note: the first `3000` is the external port)
* The container uses whatever is volume-mapped to `/space` as the space root folder. You can connect a docker volume, or a host folder to this, e.g. `-v /home/myuser/space:/space`
* SilverBullet will detect the UNIX owner (UID and GID) of the folder mapped into `/space` and run the server process with the same UID and GID so that permissions will just magically work. If you’d like to override this UID, set the `PUID` and `PGID` environment variables (see [[Install/Configuration]] for details).
# Setup
For your first run, you can run the following:
```shell
# Create a local folder "space" to keep files in
$ mkdir -p space
# Run the SilverBullet docker container in the foreground
$ docker run -it -p 3000:3000 -v ./space:/space zefhemel/silverbullet
```
This will run SilverBullet in the foreground, interactively, so you can see the logs and instructions.
If this all works fine, just kill the thing with `Ctrl-c` (don’t worry, it’s ok).
Now you probably want to run the container in daemon (background) mode, give it a name, and automatically have it restart after you e.g. reboot your machine:
The `zefhemel/silverbullet` image will give you the latest released version. This is equivalent to `zefhemel/silverbullet:latest`. If you prefer, you can also pin to a specific release, e.g. `zefhemel/silverbullet:0.5.5`. If you prefer to live on the bleeding edge, you can use the `zefhemel/silverbullet:edge` image, which is updated on every commit to the `main` brain. This is the YOLO option.
Since this is somewhat burdensome, it is recommended you use a tool like [watchtower](https://github.com/containrrr/watchtower) to automatically update your docker images and restart them. However, if we go there — we may as well use a tool like _docker compose_ to manage your containers, no?
# Docker compose
[Docker compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/) is a simple tool to manage running of multiple containers on a server you control. It’s like Kubernetes, but you know, not insanely complex.
Here is a simple `compose.yml` that runs SilverBullet as well as [watchtower](https://github.com/containrrr/watchtower), which will check for new SilverBullet upgrades daily (the default) and upgrade automatically.
Instructions:
* Please replace the password defined in `SB_USER` with something sensible such as `admin:b3stp4ssword3vah`
* This volume uses the `./space` directory (that presumably exists) in the same directory as the `compose.yml` file as the place where SB will keep its space.
* Check out [[Install/Configuration]] for more interesting `environment` variables you can set.