ledgersmb-docker

Dockerfile for LedgerSMB Docker image

Content

1. Supported tags
2. What is LedgerSMB
3. How to use this image
4. Set up LedgerSMB
5. Updating the LedgerSMB container
6. Environment Variables
7. Advanced setup
8. Troubleshooting
9. User feedback

Supported tags

• 1.11, 1.11.x, latest - Latest official release from the 1.11 branch
• 1.10, 1.10.x - Latest official release from the 1.10 branch
• 1.9, 1.9.30 - Last official release from the 1.9 branch (End-of-Life)
• 1.8, 1.8.31 - Last official release from the 1.8 branch (End-of-Life)
• 1.7, 1.7.41 - Last official release from the 1.7 branch (End-of-Life)
• 1.6, 1.6.33 - Last official release from the 1.6 branch (End-of-Life)
• 1.5, 1.5.30 - Last official release from the 1.5 branch (End-of-Life)
• 1.4, 1.4.42 - Last official release from the 1.4 branch (End-of-Life)
• master - Master branch from git, unstable

Containers supporting the development process are provided through the ledgersmb-dev-docker project. See the development container's README for more information.

What is LedgerSMB?

LedgerSMB is a user-friendly accounting and ERP solution for small to mid-size businesses. It comes with support for many languages and support for different locales.

The project aims to be the solution a start-up never outgrows.

How is this image designed to be used?

This image is designed to be used in conjunction with a running PostgreSQL instance (such as may be provided through a separate image).

This image exposes port 5762 running a Starman HTTP application server. We do recommend not exposing this port publicly, because

1. The Starman author recommends not exposing it
2. We strongly recommend TLS encryption of all application traffic

While the exposed port can be used for quick evaluation, it's recommended to add the TLS layer by applying Nginx or Apache as reverse proxy.

Enabling optional functionalities such as outgoing e-mail and printing could require additional setup of a mail service or CUPS printer service.

How to use this image

This image can be installed either automatically with the Docker compose file or manually with docker only.

Docker-Compose: Installation and start

This repository provides a file named docker-compose.yml which can be used to pull related images, install them, establish an internal network for their communications, adjust environment variables, start and stop LedgerSMB. The only instructions required, after the optional edition of the file to adjust the environment variables, are:

 $ docker-compose pull
 $ docker-compose up -d

Or use the following to set a different password and/or parallel processing capacity (so called 'workers'):

 $ docker-compose pull
 $ POSTGRES_PASSWORD=def \
   LSMB_WORKERS=10 \
   docker-compose up -d

This will set up two containers: (1) a PostgreSQL container with persistent storage which is retained between container updates and (2) a LedgerSMB container configured to connect to the PostgreSQL container as its database server. Your LedgerSMB installation should now be accessible through http://localhost:5762/.

The default number of workers is 5. The default database username and password are:

   username: postgres
   password: abc

From here, follow the steps as detailed in the instructions for preparing for first use.

Manual installation

This section assumes availability of a PostgreSQL server to attach to the LedgerSMB image as the database server.

Start LedgerSMB

 $ docker run -d -p 5762:5762 --name myledger \
              -e POSTGRES_HOST=<ip/hostname> ledgersmb/ledgersmb:latest

This command maps port 5762 of your container to port 5762 in your host. The web application inside the container should now be accessible through http://localhost:5762/setup.pl and http://localhost:5762/login.pl.

Below are more variables which determine container configuration, like POSTGRES_HOST above.

Set up LedgerSMB

• Visit http://myledger:5762/setup.pl.
• Log in with the "postgres" user and the password abc as given above - or with the credentials of your own database server in case of a manual setup - and provide the name of a company (= database name) you want to create.
• Go over the steps presented in the browser

Once you have completed the setup steps, you have a fully functional LedgerSMB instance running!

Visit http://localhost:5762/login.pl to log in and get started.

Updating the LedgerSMB container

No persistant data is stored in the LedgerSMB container.

All LedgerSMB data is stored in PostgreSQL, so you can stop/destroy/run a new LedgerSMB container as often as you want.

In case of the Docker Compose setup, all PostgreSQL data is stored on the Docker volume with the name ending in _pgdata. This volume is not destroyed when updating the containers; only explicit removal destroys the data.

Environment Variables

The LedgerSMB image uses several environment variables. They are all optional.

POSTGRES_HOST

Default: postgres

Specifies the hostname of the PostgreSQL server to connect to. If you use a PostgreSQL image, set it to the name of that image.

POSTGRES_PORT

Default: 5432

Port on which the PostgreSQL server is running.

DEFAULT_DB

Default: lsmb

Set this if you want to automatically log in to a particular LedgerSMB database without needing to enter the name of that database on the login.pl login screen.

LSMB_WORKERS

Default: 5

Set this if you want to run in a memory-constrained environment. E.g. set it to 2 when running in a 1 GB memory setup. Please do note that this may adversely affect the performance experience of users.

Mail configuration

As of 1.8.0, the image is based on Debian Buster instead of Debian Stretch; with Buster, the ssmtp program has been removed from Debian, this image had to change strategy. The main application always came with built-in e-mail yet with the deprecation, the abilities have expanded.

The following parameters are now supported to set mail preferences:

• LSMB_MAIL_SMTPHOST
  The host name/IP-address of the SMTP server that will forward mail from LedgerSMB to the outside world.
• LSMB_MAIL_SMTPPORT
  The port that the SMTP server in LSMB_MAIL_SMTPHOST listens to.
• LSMB_MAIL_SMTPTLS
  Can be one of no (default), yes or raw. yes indicates to use STARTTLS over a regular SMTP connection; raw' indicates an SMTP connection should be established over a TLS connection (a.k.a. smtps).
• LSMB_MAIL_SMTPSENDER_HOSTNAME (optional)
  When set, used to identify the host when connecting to an SMTP server. When not set, the host is queried for its host name.
• LSMB_MAIL_SMTPUSER
  Username to authenticate to the SMTP host in LSMB_MAIL_SMTPHOST.
• LSMB_MAIL_SMTPPASS
  Password to authenticate to the SMTP host in LSMB_MAIL_SMTPHOST with the user in LSMB_MAIL_SMTPUSER.
• LSMB_MAIL_SMTPAUTHMECH
  A space separated list of SASL mechanisms to be used for authentication of the smtp connection with the SMTP server. Available mechanisms depend on your installed environment, but the following mechanisms should be available in all of them: PLAIN LOGIN CRAM_MD5 & DIGEST_MD5. Note that PLAIN or LOGIN send passwords in plain text over the wire to the SMTP server; only use these methods in combination with TLS encryption.

Advanced setup

Changing configuration

The configuration file is stored in /srv/ledgersmb/local/conf/. By mounting that directory using a bind-mount to a location outside the container, configuration can be changed between container starts:

 $ docker run -d -p 5762:5762 --name myledger \
     --mount 'type=bind,src=/home/ledgersmb/conf,dst=/srv/ledgersmb/local/conf \
     -e POSTGRES_HOST=<ip/hostname> ledgersmb/ledgersmb:latest

Overriding or adding configuration

By pre-creating a configuration file in the mounted configuration directory, the standard configuration generation process in the container can be overruled:

 $ cat <<EOF > /home/ledgersmb/conf/ledgersmb.yaml
   ... YOUR CONFIG HERE ...
 EOF
 $ docker run -d -p 5762:5762 --name myledger \
     --mount 'type=bind,src=/home/ledgersmb/conf,dst=/srv/ledgersmb/local/conf \
     -e POSTGRES_HOST=<ip/hostname> ledgersmb/ledgersmb:latest

If you do not want to completely overrule the configuration generated, but instead supplement the configuration, you can put incremental configuration snippets in files named ledgersmb.XXX.yaml in the same folder. E.g.:

 $ cat <<EOF > /home/ledgersmb/conf/ledgersmb.001.yaml
 logging:
   file: ledgersmb.logging
 EOF

Documentation with respect to the available configuration keys is available in the LedgerSMB repository.

Docker Compose with reverse proxy

The docker-compose-reverseproxy.yml file shows a docker-compose setup which adds an Nginx reverse proxy configuration on top of the base docker-compose.yml configuration file. If the content of this repository is cloned into the current directory (git clone https://github.com/ledgersmb/ledgersmb-docker.git ; cd ledgersmb-docker), it can be used as:

 $ docker-compose \
    -f docker-compose.yml \
    -f docker-compose-reverseproxy.yml \
       up -d

This setup can be used in combination with an image which runs the Certbot certificate renewal process and Nginx to do TLS termination. The default reverse proxy is mostly an example; it publishes on http://localhost:8080/.

An example of such an image can be found at https://github.com/jonasalfredsson/docker-nginx-certbot, which is published on Docker Hub as jonasal/nginx-certbot.

Upgrade note When upgrading this setup, please remove the volume ending in _lsmbdata before starting the upgraded containers. Without that, the webcontent won't be upgraded! E.g.:

  $ docker-compose \
      -f docker-compose.yml \
      -f docker-compose-reverseproxy.yml \
        rm -s -f -v && \
    docker volume rm ledgersmb-docker_lsmbdata && \
    docker-compose \
      -f docker-compose.yml \
      -f docker-compose-reverseproxy.yml \
        pull && \
    docker-compose \
      -f docker-compose.yml \
      -f docker-compose-reverseproxy.yml \
        up -d

Troubleshooting/Developing

Currently the LedgerSMB installation is in /srv/ledgersmb and the startup & config script is /usr/bin/start.sh.

User Feedback

Issues

If you have any problems with or questions about this image or LedgerSMB, please contact us on the mailing list or through a GitHub issue.

You can also reach some of the official LedgerSMB maintainers via the Matrix room in #ledgersmb:matrix.org. The Element Matrix client is highly recommended.

Contributing

You are invited to contribute new features, fixes, or updates, large or small; we are always thrilled to receive pull requests, and do our best to process them as fast as we can.