Docker Shenanigans

How Does Docker?

Welcome back faithful readers! Been a spell, but I wanted to post something on here. If for nothing else as an exercise to see if I can write this post from Eclipse. If your reading this, I have succeeded. Anywho, on to todays topic! Docker!

Now I shouldn’t be giving explanations, becuase I rarely seem to know what I’m doing. But in a nutshell (weird phrase right?) Docker is a way of deploying “containers” which, as I understand it, are little stripped down VM’s. The nice part about this is you can install, uninstall, and modify software on your machine, without actually effecting the base setup, and with less overhead than a full VM.

Get To the Good Stuff Already!

Okay fine! I’m using Docker mainly for my plex server, and my setup is largely based upon ![this guide (https://blog.linuxserver.io/2017/06/24/the-perfect-media-server-2017/). Honestly despite it being from 2017, the majority of the info there is still good. Am I telling you to go read that instead of this? Well if you are looking for a step by step tutorial, yes. That is exactly what I’m saying. If you prefer my ramblings, stay right where you are.

Debian

That guide uses Debian 9, which was new back then, and is as of today, still the current Debian Stable. For a server, you really want stable! I toyed around with Ubuntu or maybe running Debian with a “lite” GUI, but really there is no need for this on a server. That guide points out a few “GUI” options (Like Cockpit, or Portainer, more on that later) that I think make any local GUI desktop totally unneeded. Debian is easy to install, and easy to find answers about online. Recommend.

Mergerfs

Mergerfs is actually one of the big reasons I like this guide! Mergerfs is IMHO way more elegant than traditional RAID. You don’t have to configure much really, and if a drive goes out, whatever! Slap another one in redownload what you lost on that one drive, and the rest is still safely on the other drives. It also allows Sonarr to have a much easier time with shows that span multiple drives. There is no other good way to handle that other than RAID.