Technical Info

How Does DockSTARTer Work

DockSTARTer works by generating the configuration that Compose uses. A linux "pro" might use Compose to do what DockSTARTer does themselves but it would still take a lot longer.

Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications. To learn more about Compose refer to the following documentation.

Compose works by reading YAML (*.yml) configuration files with the paths, ports and parameters each Container should run with.

YML Files

• DO NOT EDIT THESE FILES DIRECTLY. Overriding these settings is easy but you must create a new file first. See the Overrides / Introduction page.

YML files are akin to XML files and below is an example:

services:
  sonarr:
    image: containers_author/sonarr:latest
    container_name: sonarr
    restart: ${SONARR_RESTART}
    environment:
      - PGID=${PGID}
      - PUID=${PUID}
      - TZ=${TZ}
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - ${DOCKERCONFDIR}/sonarr:/config
      - ${DOCKERSTORAGEDIR}:/storage

In the example above,

image is the Container that you're using but also the quasi URL Docker will attempt to pull it from.

container_name is the human readable name Docker will use to describe it.

Volumes

During the Getting Started section, you set volumes for your configuration, download and media etc in theGLOBAL section.

The path to Sonarr's config in the above example, broken up, is ${DOCKERCONFDIR}/sonarr then the deliminator : followed by /config

${DOCKERCONFDIR}/sonarr is the path on your computer that Sonarr will see when it looks in /config. In this way, all your Containers will have their own private folder in your global config mount.

The ${DOCKERSTORAGEDIR} location is public to all apps that need it. That means Sonarr will be writing and reading from the same ${DOCKERSTORAGEDIR}:/storage mounts as Radarr, SickBeard etc AND your download clients.

Again, do not edit the default YML files, instead, see the section on Overrides / Introduction. (Assuming you are reading this page from start to finish for the first time) there is a reason you haven't seen their location yet ;)

Ports

The ports for access to (and from) your apps are manipulated in your .env settings. I use the Sonarr example a lot but if you're not familiar, it's default port is 8989.

SONARR_PORT_8989=6969

If you were to edit the .env for sonarr to the above, and run the generator again, you would then access Sonarr at http://app.address:6969/calendar instead of the default port, 8989.

• Do not change your apps internal ports unless you know what you are doing. For instance, if you change Sonarr's internal port to 4545, it will still listen on 8989 by default. So then, you won't be able to access the WebGUI and without that, I don't even know where to begin changing the port in Sonarr's config files. And unless you want to run Transmission and RuTorrent side by side, I can't think of a good reason to change them in .env either.