Single Container Feedback

[hay-kot]

Since #1948 we've started publishing an experimental image that merges both the frontend and backend services into a single container image. This image is currently in an experimental state, and should be used with caution. Continued support for this image will be based on user feedback and demand, if you're using this image please let us know how it's working for you.

Note that frontend and backend configurations are both applied to the same container.

---
version: "3.7"
services:
  mealie-omni:
    image: hkotel/mealie:omni-nightly
    container_name: mealie
    volumes:
      - mealie-data:/app/data/
    environment:
      - ALLOW_SIGNUP=true
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=America/Anchorage
      - BASE_URL=https://mealie.yourdomain.com
    restart: always

volumes:
  mealie-data:
    driver: local

[racermako93]

Migrated my existing mealie containers to the new omni image. Worked like a charm. Thanks!

[y8s]

What method did you use for migration? the internal backups and migration feature?

[racermako93]

"Migrated" was perhaps the wrong word. I only updated my docker-compose.yml and kept the same volume.

[y8s]

I tried using portainer to copy the whole stack but it didn't keep the volume completely intact (no users came along for some reason) so I did what you said. Updated the docker compose to use just the omni image and removed the API-specific env stuff and it came right up as expected. So much simpler to manage.

[cullenmcdermott]

I just set it up and imported my recipes from my 0.5 installation and it seems to work great! The only issue I had was setting the port correctly but I found the right port and it came up just fine after that.

[seanmcardwell]

Very interested in this. Just re-setup Mealie on a new Truenas Scale instance and was having issues with the TrueChart for it.

Decided instead of dealing with that to just try this as a docker image, and happy so far! Just restoring my instance now and hopefully my friends are able to just hop right back in this week!

[audifan88]

Just upgraded my old instance from 1.0.3 to 1.0.5/latest then set everything up on the single image container, much easier this way to maintain, thanks for the great recipe book!

[bartmans]

Can't seem to make this work. What port does the omni use?

[shiruken]

It's not documented explicitly, but it's the same as the frontend for the two-container implementation: 3000.

[bartmans]

Mmm. I thought frontend is 9925?

Had to add
ports:
- "9926:3000"
because 9925 was already taken by existing dual container setup.

Omni is now reachable on :9926. Will check it out further.

[shiruken]

9925 is the host port in that example and can be whatever you want. 3000 is the fixed container port.

[psarossy]

I've switched to this for my k8s deployment and it makes it both much cleaner and less annoying to set up in several ways.
Ran into the port documentation issue as well, but that's and easy fix.

+1 to maintaining (or switching to) a single container image!

[shiruken]

Tested this on my Unraid system using an existing data volume and it seems to have transitioned seamlessly from the two-container setup without issue. Definitely will be the preferred pathway on Unraid since Docker Compose isn't natively supported.

For the record, this was the minimal configuration necessary to get it working:

[OvernightPancake]

I just wanted to leave a helpful hint here for anyone like me that struggled to set this up in Unraid:

I had to add the variables 'FRONTEND_PORT' & 'API_PORT' in order to make this run. Make sure that you set these ports to something unused and you should be good to go.
Once logged in, all I had to do was restore the backup from my main Mealie container as a Migration and the recipes moved over.

[shiruken]

Interesting. I just re-tested with the exact configuration shown in my screenshot and did not have to specify any additional variables to get it to work. Those two variables also aren't specified in the documentation, are they just local names?

[OvernightPancake]

I agree, not sure why it would not work for me as it did for you. I ended up doing some digging in the Backend Confirguration documentation for running 2 separate containers and tried those variables. Let me test it again and see if this was just a one-off.

[OvernightPancake]

Weird, I've tried it again and got this working without an issue. Perhaps my original issue had something to do with my custom docker networks and port usage. Oh well, 5th times the charm and it now works without the extra variables!

[ghost]

Can you share your template from unraid?

[swaggerino]

Also gave the omni a try on unraid. Great work! I'm all for a single container.

[Jefe2]

This morning I installed this container on my ARM-64 system and migrated from v0.5.6. Works beautifully so far. Really appreciate the single-container setup!

[bentolor]

Just tried to include this into my setup involving Letsencrypt / ACME-Companion, Nextcloud, and co. You can see the base of my template at https://github.com/bentolor/docker-nextcloud-collabora-postgresql-letsencrypt/

I initially tried to deploy it in a subpath, but then saw the FAQ entry. Eventually I stumbled upon, that the container exposes two ports and the API port is auto-preferred, while the frontend port 3000 was not visible in docker ps.

This snippet eventually seems to work for me in my setup.

  mealie-omni:
    image: hkotel/mealie:omni-nightly
    container_name: mealie
    volumes:
      - mealie-data:/app/data/
    networks:
      - proxy-tier
    environment:
      - ALLOW_SIGNUP=true
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ="Europe/Berlin"
      - BASE_URL=https://MY-DYNDSN-ADDRESS/
      - LETSENCRYPT_HOST=MY-DYNDSN-ADDRESS
      - VIRTUAL_HOST=MY-DYNDSN-ADDRESS
      - VIRTUAL_NETWORK=proxy-tier
      - VIRTUAL_PORT=3000
    restart: always

Of course, not to forget to declare the mealie-data in the volumes-Section.

[epheterson]

I tried this and when I load in the browser I just get: {"detail":"Not Found"}

I first tried with no data, to restore a backup instead and saw Not Found. Then I tried copying the contents of the docker volume to a new directory and pointing the container to that, also Not Found. Finally I used Portainer to point it to the existing mealie volume, and still Not Found. Not sure what to try next!

[shiruken]

Make sure you map port 3000 on the container to the host:

ports:
  - 9925:3000

[epheterson]

Oh thanks, I decided to try loading the image directly and using Synology Docker UI to set up the ENV variables mentioned above. Through that process the default container port was 9000.

I’ll try this tonight, but looks like the default container config needs to be updated.

[bartmans]

See above if you try to install next to existing Mealie, use other port ie 9926

[epheterson]

Yup, that works, thanks!

@hay-kot please make the default config 3000 instead of 9000 for people who use tools that populate the defaults during setup.

@bartmans Yeah I did use a new host port for omni, and also never ran both instances at the same time.

[Plevuus]

It works and it works well! I had some trouble assigning the existing volumes to the omni docker, but that is due to my limited docker knowledge. The only issue I found so far is that the 'copy asset' button in the recipe edit window is not working anymore. I guess that it is not related to omni. I moved from V1.0.0beta5 to the omni-nightly. I really like the 'I made this' button!

[JvdMaat]

Very much in favor of a single container setup. To me mealie is a single app. Very few apps I have use multiple containers, and in most cases, the second container is a database or something that really should be externalized.
Can you release an omni v1.0.0b5.5? Any point in time non-nightly version would do for my purposes of regular home use.

[CuratorViper]

Yes please, single container all the way!
Migrated from the dual container to the omni without any issues!

[fivestones]

I updated my docker-compose.yml file as shown at the top of this discussion, and just like that, it's working great!

I'm very happy to have this omni container. Thanks!

[Ernie4President]

Just did a fresh install on a Proxmox LXC virtual -with Docker inside- and all is running smoothly.

Now, I would like the data of Mealie to be written on my NAS. I've tried several options but can't seem to get the hang of it.
I'm using this in the volumes section (trying NFS now instead of SMB):

volumes:
  nas:
    driver_opts:
      type: nfs
      o: nfsvers=4,addr=192.168.178.133,rw
      device: ":/volume1/proxmox/mealie”

I realise this question is probably a bit off-topic....

[JvdMaat]

If that is the standard docker-compose format, you would want something like this:
volumes:
- /mnt/nas/mealiev1:/app/data
That would map the NFS mounted path to /app/data inside the Mealie container.

[Ernie4President]

Why didn't I think of that? Working perfect! Thank you @epheterson and @JvdMaat! You made me very happy 👍
Really like the fact that the docker container and the data are separated now.
As suggested by Eric, I was able to move the content from the 'old' docker instance to the NAS.

Again, thanks!

[mgrimace]

Hey do you mind sharing how you setup your LXC and your compose file? I'm planning to try the same thing (LXC + mount data on a NAS). Thanks!

[mgrimace]

More specifically, if I replace the mealie-data:/app/data/ with /mnt/media/recipes:/app/data I can't login using the default credentials. It works with the default mealie-data:/app/data/ though, but I'd like for it to be on my NAS.

[michaelcox12]

I'm having the same issue, setting the data to be stored on the NAS instead of mealie-data and the default credentials aren't letting me log in

[nillebor]

Registration of user does not work,
ALLOW_SIGNUP=true is enabled.

Show recipes as with the old version without login, there are not in the version?
RECIPE_PUBLIC=true is enabled.

Postgres doesn't work with old database. SQLite works fine. Maybe need a clean new database.
Somewhere I also read something with superuser rights in the new version. But I can't find it anymore.

[bentolor]

Can confirm. /register leads to 404. Worked for my installation in older versions.

[bartmans]

Not just omni, my two container nightly also gives 404.

[hay-kot]

I think the Nuxt router changed behavior during an upgrade, you can work around this by navigating to /register/register until we get it fixed.

https://demo.mealie.io/register/register

• [v1.0.0b] - /register Page returns 404 #2222 (comment)

[nillebor]

it's fixed with the last version, many thanks!

Is there possibility to view recipes without log in? In the old version this is possible.

[rgardn12]

running single container, no issues!

[roelven]

Have been running the omni container for about a week now behind a Caddy reverse proxy and with Mailgun as my SMTP server, works like a charm! Extending the docker-compose.yml to get Caddy + Lets Encrypt running was very straightforward.

Here's my docker-compose.yml in case it's interesting:

version: "3.7"
services:
  mealie-omni:
    image: hkotel/mealie:omni-nightly
    container_name: mealie
    networks:
      - caddy
    labels:
      caddy: mealie.something.com
      caddy.reverse_proxy: "{{upstreams 3000}}"
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
      - "9000:9000"
    volumes:
      - mealie-data:/app/data/
    environment:
      - ALLOW_SIGNUP=false
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Europe/Berlin
      - BASE_URL=https://mealie.something.com
      - DEFAULT_GROUP="XXXXXX"
      - DEFAULT_EMAIL=XXXXXXX
      # =====================================
      - SMTP_HOST=smtp.mailgun.org
      - SMTP_PORT=587
      - SMTP_FROM_NAME=Mealie
      - SMTP_AUTH_STRATEGY=TLS
      - SMTP_FROM_EMAIL=XXXXXXXXXX
      - SMTP_USER=XXXXXXXXX
      - SMTP_PASSWORD=XXXXXX
    restart: always

networks:
  caddy:
    external: true

volumes:
  mealie-data:
    driver: local

[marcocunha]

I am not being able to access the API to fetch the meal of the day, whenever I access http://MY_IP:9924/api/meal-plans/today/image?group_name=Home , it always shows the following
{"detail":"Not Found"}

Here is my docker-compose file for your reference:

mealie-omni:
image: hkotel/mealie:omni-nightly
container_name: mealie
ports:
  - "9925:3000" #frontend
  - "9924:9000" #API
volumes:
  - ${SELF_HOME_DIR}/mealie:/app/data/
environment:
  - ALLOW_SIGNUP=true
  # Database Settings
  - DB_ENGINE=postgres
  - POSTGRES_SERVER=postgres
  - POSTGRES_PORT=5432
  - POSTGRES_DB=mealie
  # Default Recipe Settings
  - RECIPE_PUBLIC=true
  - RECIPE_SHOW_NUTRITION=false
  - RECIPE_SHOW_ASSETS=true
  - RECIPE_LANDSCAPE_VIEW=true
  - RECIPE_DISABLE_COMMENTS=true
  - RECIPE_DISABLE_AMOUNT=false
restart: always

What am I missing? I can access normally the frontend app via the http://MY_IP:9925

[marcocunha]

I added that port because I remember seeing that is the one used by the API. But indeed, I tried the URL you provided and I am getting the same result.

[bartmans]

On a Synology try adding the Docker subnet (something like 172.x.x.x) to the firewall.

[sguinea1989]

Unfortunately, that doesnt seem to be it. Disabled firewall and still getting the same result

[hs82h]

I have the same problem. Other API requests do work, but this image is not.

(btw, I also have this issue in the 'old' dual container build.)

[hs82h]

I found a workaround here, it works for me!

https://nightly.mealie.io/documentation/community-guide/home-assistant/

[otomay]

I spent 1 hour trying to configure the traditional method and the API didn't work. With Single Container it worked at first (✿◠‿◠)

[marcocunha]

@otomay can you please share your docker-compose file?

[RefineryX]

This has really made my day!! I have been waiting for a single container image for a while and now I am happy to install mealie!

Just installed and do not see any issues! Again, thank you!

[ludwig-loth]

Installed this with Portainer on a RPi 4 4GB with standard Raspberry Pi OS and it worked flawless.
Many thanks!

[techrivertree]

I have never used a virtual machine so is there any other way to install Mealie?

[Ionshard]

Just installed Mealie for the first time using the omni image. So far everything is working great!

[Br0kenSilos]

Absolutely love the software. Especially the wife. What makes her happy, makes me happy. ;-)

Yes, please keep going with the OMNI image. This is by far, the superior way to go for most people.

[Br0kenSilos]

As I dig a little deeper, I am seeing some issues and I am not sure if they are a result of my setup or if they are things that may need tweaking in the OMNI image.

For instance, when I go into /admin/site-settings, its shows that my Docker Volume is mis-configured even though everything "seems" to be working correctly (so far).

And if I go into the Backups section, and click "Create Backup", nothing seems to happen at all. Now, this does note at the top of the page that it is an Experimental Feature and perhaps that is why.

In fact, now that I am looking around in the admin section, nothing in there seems to be working really so perhaps there is an issue with my volume setup? This is a "from scratch" setup that was created using the following docker-compose.yml file. It looks like it created the volume at: /var/lib/docker/volumes/mealie_mealie-data/_data

---

version: "3.7"
services:
mealie-omni:
image: hkotel/mealie:omni-nightly
container_name: mealie
ports:
- "3000:3000"
- "9000:9000"
volumes:
- mealie-data:/app/data/
environment:
- ALLOW_SIGNUP=false
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=America/MyState/MyCity
- BASE_URL=https://mealie.mydomain.com
- SMTP_HOST=smtp.mydomain.com
- SMTP_PORT=465
- SMTP_FROM_NAME=Mealie Recipe Administrator
- SMTP_AUTH_STRATEGY=SSL
- SMTP_FROM_EMAIL=emailuser@mydomain.com
- SMTP_USER=emailuser@mydomain.com
- SMTP_PASSWORD=MySecretPassword
restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
mealie-data:
driver: local

[JvdMaat]

I'm not too familiar with the docker volumes. But that (in my novice opinion) complicates things.
It's often easier to just make sure there is a local path where your docker-compose.yaml file is.
If that is in /opt for example, then create /opt/mealie, make sure the correct user owns it (chown 1000:1000 /opt/mealie), and update your volume section to:

volumes:
  - /opt/mealie:/app/data

If that's not what you want to do, I guess make sure mealie has write permissions in the volume. (use docker exec -it mealie sh, and then make sure you can go to the /app/data directory and create a file there)

[Br0kenSilos]

I'm pretty new to docker as well although I do have several other things setup and running well. This is probably very close to the issue I think. I create all of my docker containers using a non-root account. I user a folder structure like /home/dockeruser/docker/ContainerName and then create everything for the specific container under there. So in this case its
/home/dockeruser/docker/mealie
My docker-compose file is located there. However, it seems I created this particular container and ran docker-compose using the root account instead of my dockeruser account. So the whole thing was owned by root. Since I did not have a lot of data in there, I decided to remove all of it (folder, container, images, volumes, network).

Then (making sure to use my dockeruser account) I recreated the folder and adjusted my docker-compose file to the following:

---

version: "3.7"
services:
mealie-omni:
image: hkotel/mealie:omni-nightly
container_name: mealie
ports:
- "3000:3000"
- "9000:9000"
volumes:
- /home/dockeruser/docker/mealie/mealie-data:/app/data/
environment:
- ALLOW_SIGNUP=true
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=America/Anchorage
- BASE_URL=https://mealie.mydomain.com
- SMTP_HOST=smtp.mymailserver.com
- SMTP_PORT=465
- SMTP_FROM_NAME=Mealie Recipe Administrator
- SMTP_AUTH_STRATEGY=SSL
- SMTP_FROM_EMAIL=mealie.admin@mydomain.com
- SMTP_USER=mealie.admin@mydomain.com
- SMTP_PASSWORD=MySecretPassword
restart: unless-stopped

Then I ran docker-compose up -d again. The container installed and started without error. This time it created the mealie-data volume under /home/dockeruser/docker/mealie/ as expected. However, the same issues are present. Going into admin page, nothing really works there. And when I have it test the volume, it reports issues but does not elaborate. So I went to remove everything again and this time when I ran rm -r mealie to clear it all out, I got a permission denied. I drilled down into the folder and somehow, the install had set root permissions on the recipes sub-folder.

So again, I'm not sure if it is something I did wrong or something odd with the container build.

---

Also, if I install the hkotel/mealie:latest image instead, that image seems to work just fine. However, after seeing the differences between the two images, I do like the layout and functionality of the OMNI image better. So I'd really like to get that one working if I can.

The contents of the docker-compose.yml file I used for hkotel/mealie:latest is:

---

version: "3.1"
services:
mealie:
container_name: mealie
image: hkotel/mealie:latest
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- 9925:80
environment:
- ALLOW_SIGNUP=true
- PUID=1000
- PGID=1000
- TZ=America/Anchorage
- BASE_URL=https://mealie.mydomain.com
- SMTP_HOST=smtp.myemailserver.com
- SMTP_PORT=465
- SMTP_FROM_NAME=Mealie Recipe Administrator
- SMTP_AUTH_STRATEGY=SSL
- SMTP_FROM_EMAIL=mealie.admin@mydomain.com
- SMTP_USER=mealie.admin@mydomain.com
- SMTP_PASSWORD=MySecretPassword
volumes:
- /home/dockeradmin/docker/mealie/data:/app/data

[JvdMaat]

I do run docker-compose as root, but I also have the PUID and GUID set to 1000. However looking at the folder structure, most files are owned by 1000:1000, but this may be due to me doing a restore at some point, as there are also a lot of files owned by root:root. So looks like mealie is ignoring the PUID and GUID environments and just running as root.
(And since your docker compose is ran as dockeruser, it doesn't have access to root owned files).
Some quick googling leads me to think that running docker as non-root is great for security, but the container needs to support it (via the PUID/GUID environment variables). I noticed I have quite a few containers that do not. Which complicates running non-root docker.

Side note.. where are you running your SMTP server? I am trying to get one setup for my domain, but @@#%$^%@#$ Comcast won't unblock port 25, so I can't run it in docker at home.

[Br0kenSilos]

Yeah, thats why I try to run all of my containers as non-root if possible. But in this case, even when I accidentally ran the whole thing as root, I still had the same issues. Very weird indeed. As for email... I have some domains/websites hosted on dreamhost.com so I just setup email addresses there as needed. It works well for things list this. But I will admit, I really want to setup my own email server so I can get full control of the backend. But basically you need to have a business account with a static IP and reverse DNS setup to work properly. Its either that or setup a VPS somewhere that allows email servers. Either way, I dont have the monthly personal funds to support that endeavor. :D

[accforgithubtest]

@hay-kot - Any tentative dates for when the omni-nightly will be switched to a proper versioning scheme number on dockerhub ?

[killsnow]

This is my docker-compose.yaml，Everything is OK!

version: "3.1"
services:
  mealie:
    container_name: mealie
    image: hkotel/mealie:omni-nightly
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 9925:80
    environment:
      PUID: 1000
      PGID: 1000
      TZ: Asia/Shanghai
      # Default Recipe Settings
      RECIPE_PUBLIC: 'true'
      RECIPE_SHOW_NUTRITION: 'true'
      RECIPE_SHOW_ASSETS: 'true'
      RECIPE_LANDSCAPE_VIEW: 'true'
      RECIPE_DISABLE_COMMENTS: 'false'
      RECIPE_DISABLE_AMOUNT: 'false'
      LDAP_AUTH_ENABLED: 'false'
    volumes:
      - $PWD/mealie/data/:/app/data

[Br0kenSilos]

So I have tried every iteration of this that I can think of.. Running purely as root with the default docker-compose.yml file included. I've tried under my dockeruser account and even changed the permissions on the folders that it creates in /var/lib/docker/volumes/mealie_mealie-data/_data to make my dockeruser the owner of every folder involved and no matter what I do, the front end seems to work ok but basically all the options at /admin/site-settings do not work with the OMNI image. It fails the volume test immediately with no reason given. Even the email test fails, even though I am able to send emails from within the front end.

@hay-kot Any ideas? Is this just because that part of the OMNI image is not fully baked yet or am I just doing something dumb?

[killtux]

after some updates on the host machine i get this when starting mealie omni up. is the image still being actively developed?

[bentolor]

@killtux Have you already switched to the latest image tag from the former omni-nightly tag? At least that was my issue for my deployment going stale.

https://docs.mealie.io/documentation/getting-started/installation/installation-checklist/#migrating-from-other-v1-versions

[killtux]

thanks for the hint. i completly missed the transition to the official image. after tag & port change everything works like before <3