Hi! Question in the title.
I get that its super easy to setup. But its really worthwhile to have something that:
- runs everything as root (not many well built images with proper useranagement it seems)
- you cannot really know which stuff is in the images: you must trust who built it
- lots of mess in the system (mounts, fake networks, rules…)
I always host on bare metal when I can, but sometimes (immich, I look at you!) Seems almost impossible.
I get docker in a work environment, but on self hosted? Is it really worth while? I would like to hear your opinions fellow hosters.
- Podman solves the root issue
- you can inspect the stuff. You don’t have to, but it helps if you’re not paranoid with popular and widespread images
- I have no mess
It’s great that you do install things on bare metal, I did that in the beginning until I discovered docker and I will never go back. Docker/ podman compose is just so good
Need to study podman probably, stuff running as root is my main dislike.
Probably if in only used docker images created by me I would be less concerned of losing track of what I am really deploying, but this would deflect the main advantage of easy deploy?
Portability is a point I didn’t considered too… But rebuilding a bare metal server properly compatimentized took me a few hours only, so is that really so important?
But rebuilding a bare metal server properly compatimentized took me a few hours only, so is that really so important?
Depends on how much you value your time.
Compare a few hours on bare metal to a few minutes with containers. Then consider that you also spend extra time on bare metal cleaning up messes. Containers don’t make a mess in the first place.
I find it makes my life easier, personally, because I can set up and tear down environments I’m playing with easily.
As for your user & permissions concern, are you aware that docker these days can be configured to map “root” in the container to a different user? Personally I prefer to use podman though, which doesn’t have that problem to begin with
I find it makes my life easier, personally, because I can set up and tear down environments I’m playing with easily.
Same here. I self-host a bunch of dev tools for my personal toy projects, and I decided to migrate from Drone CI to Woodpecker CI this week. Didn’t have to worry about uninstalling anything, learning what commands I need to start/stop/restart Woodpecker properly, etc. I just commented-out my Drone CI/Runner services from my docker-compose file, added the Woodpecker stuff, pointed it to my Gitea variables and ran
docker compose up -d
.If my server ever crashes, I can just copy it over and start from scratch.
I really need to get into Woodpecker.