ente/server/docs/quickstart.md

quickstart.sh

The quickstart.sh script creates a Docker compose file that does not require cloning the repository, and uses pre-built images instead. It is meant to provide an easy way for people to get started with self hosting Ente without needing to build museum or the web app from source.

The easiest way to run the script is to copy paste the following command into your terminal:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ente-io/ente/main/server/quickstart.sh)"

Tip

If you don't want to run via curl, you can alternatively download quickstart.sh, chmod +x it and then run it with ./quickstart.sh.

After the Docker compose cluster starts, you can open the Ente web app at http://localhost:3000.

Tip

The verification code when you try to create an account can be seen in the logs (See self hosting docs for more ways to get it)

Details

The only requirement the script has is for a recent-ish version of Docker.

The script first creates a directory named my-ente and changes to it.

Tip

"Ente" (pronounced en-tay) means "mine" in Malayalam, our Founder's mother tongue (the product literally thus means "My Photos"), so our quickstart directory name my-ente means "my-my".

Then it creates a Docker compose file (compose.yaml) from a template, and a museum.yaml with fresh autogenerated credentials.

Finally, it start the Docker compose cluster running the following services on 3 open ports:

Service	Port	Notes
museum	:8080	Ente's API server
web	:3000	Ente Photos web app
postgres		DB
minio	:3200	S3

For each of these, it'll use the latest published Docker image.

You can do a quick smoke test by pinging the API:

curl localhost:8080/ping

Or directly start using the web app by opening http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

The first time around, the cluster will keep running as long as the quickstart.sh script is running (you can stop it by using Ctrl-C).

Subsequently, whenever you want to start the cluster, you can go back to the same directory and run docker compose up again.

cd /path/to/my-ente # Where you ran the quickstart script originally
docker compose up

If you want to keep it running in the background, you can pass the -d flag to the docker compose up command:

cd /path/to/my-ente
docker compose up -d

And then later, to stop the cluster, you can:

cd /path/to/my-ente
docker compose down

Apart from this my-ente directory, the script does not install anything else on your system. Settings and credentials are saved in my-ente, while other persistent data is saved in volumes managed by Docker.

Important

The museum.yaml contains your (unique) autogenerated museum, DB and S3 credentials, without which the data on your volumes will not be accessible.

Caution

If you delete the my-ente folder, the volumes will still persist. So if you want to recreate everything from scratch, you can clear these volumes by

cd /path/to/my-ente
docker compose down --volumes

Be careful when doing so, making sure you run the command in the correct directory as the volumes will be permanently removed, including any photos you added to your self hosted instance.

Tip

If you're getting errors like pq: password authentication failed when starting museum, one possibility is that you're recreating the my-ente folder but still have leftover volumes (my-ente_postgres-data and my-ente_minio-data from a previous attempt).

Caveat

This sample setup is only intended to make it easy for people to get started. If you're intending to use your self hosted instance for serious purposes, we strongly recommend understanding all the moving parts, and consider if you should use an external S3 (/ DB) instead of the quickstart samples.

Important

Keep a plaintext backup of your photos until you are sure of what you are doing and have a backup strategy worked out.

Next steps

See help.ente.io/self-hosting for guides on connecting to your self hosted instance using your mobile app, modifying your setup to allow uploading from your mobile app, and other customizations.