Dispatch

Official bootstrap for running your own Dispatch with Docker.

Requirements

• Docker 17.05.0+
• Compose 1.19.0+

Minimum Hardware Requirements:

• You need at least 2400MB RAM

Setup

To get started with all the defaults, simply clone the repo and run ./install.sh in your local check-out.

There may need to be modifications to the included example config files (.env) to accommodate your needs or your environment (such as adding Google credentials). If you want to perform these, do them before you run the install script and copy them without the .example extensions in the name before running the install.sh script.

Data

By default Dispatch does not come with any data. If you're looking for some example data, please use the postgres dump file located here to load example data.

Note: when running the install.sh file, you will be asked whether to load this database dump, or to initialize a new database.

Starting with a clean database

If you decide to start with a clean database, you will need a user. To create a user, go to http://localhost:8000/default/auth/register.

Securing Dispatch with SSL/TLS

If you'd like to protect your Dispatch install with SSL/TLS, there are fantastic SSL/TLS proxies like HAProxy and Nginx. You'll likely want to add this service to your docker-compose.yml file.

Updating Dispatch

The included install.sh script is meant to be idempotent and to bring you to the latest version. What this means is you can and should run install.sh to upgrade to the latest version available.

Upgrading from an older version of postgres

If you are using an earlier version of postgres you may need to run manual steps to upgrade to the newest Postgres image.

This assumes that you have not changed the default Postgres data path (/var/lib/postgresql/data) in your docker-compose.yml.

If you have changed it, please replace all occurences of /var/lib/postgresql/data with your path.

1. Make a backup of your Dispatch Postgres data dir.
2. Stop all Dispatch containers, except the postgres one (e.g. use docker stop and not docker-compose stop).
3. Create a new Postgres container which uses a different data directory:

docker run -d \
      --name postgresnew \
      -e POSTGRES_DB=dispatch \
      -e POSTGRES_USER=dispatch \
      -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=dispatch \
      -v /var/lib/postgresql/new:/var/lib/postgresql/data:rw \
      postgres:latest

4. Use pg_dumpall to dump all data from the existing Postgres container to the new Postgres container (replace DISPATCH_DATABASE_CONTAINER_NAME (default is postgres) with the name of the old Postgres container):

docker exec \
    DISPATCH_DATABASE_CONTAINER_NAME pg_dumpall -U postgres | \
    docker exec -i postgresnew psql -U postgres

5. Stop and remove both Postgres containers:

docker stop DISPATCH_DATABASE_CONTAINER_NAME postgresnew
docker rm DISPATCH_DATABASE_CONTAINER_NAME postgresnew

6. Edit your docker-compose.yml to use the postgres:latest image for the database container.
7. Replace old Postgres data directory with upgraded data directory:

mv /var/lib/postgresql/data /var/lib/postgresql/old
mv /var/lib/postgresql/new /var/lib/postgresql/data

8. Delete the old existing containers:

docker-compose rm

9. Start Dispatch up again:

docker-compose up

That should be it. Your Postgres data has now been updated to use the postgres image.