pretalx-docker

This repository contains a Container image and a Docker Compose setup for a pretalx installation.

Please note that the repository is provided by the pretalx community and not officially supported.

Components

The repository holds the a collection of usable components.

Dockerfiles to build container images
Compose manifests to show how to use the containers
CI manifests to automatically build the images

Files and directories explained

Directories

You can list the directories in this repository with:

$ tree -d -L 3 -a -I '.git'

.github/, GitHub-specific contents
- workflows/, GitHub Actions workflows
bin/, maintenance and life-cycle scripts
compose/, Compose overlays, to be used as additional -f flags
- build/, overlays for locally building the images
  - source/, overlays for source builds
  - standalone/, overlays for building standalone images
config/, runtime configuration files
context/, Container image build contexts
- base/, the pretalx base image with its system dependencies
- cron/, an image variant with cron
- default/, the Pretalx stock image
- extended/, an extended Pretalx image variant with plugins
- source/, contexts to build Pretalx images from source
  - extended.cron/, an extended Pretalx image with plugins and cron
  - standalone, a standalone Pretalx image with supervisor; builds from local or remote sources
  - standalone.extended.cron/, a standalone Pretalx image with cron, supervisor and plugins
- standalone/, contexts to build standalone Pretalx images
  - default/, a standalone Pretalx image with supervisor
  - extended/, an extended standalone Pretalx image with supervisor and plugins
  - extended.cron, an extended standalone Pretalx image with supervisor, cron and plugins
legacy/, support for the legacy Python version of docker-compose

Files

The application stack is defined by a Compose manifest and an environment file, which are extended by overlay Compose manifests.

An additional environment is provided for conducting image builds with Compose.

.env.build.example, example environment to build images
.env.example, example environment
compose.yml, Compose manifest

.github/

GitHub-specific configuration files.

dependabot.yml, configuration to automatically update dependencies

.github/workflows/

GitHub Actions workflows to build the images in CI.

build-and-push.yml, parametrised build workflow to be called by other workflows
build.default.yml, build workflow that builds the default context
build.plugins.yml, build workflow that builds the plugins context

bin/

Scripts to perfom bulk operations on the repository.

clean, removes generated data, including built images and an eventual clone of pretalx for the local source overlay
build, builds the pretalx/base:3.12-bookworm, pretalx/pretalx:2024.1.0, pretalx/pretalx-extended:2024.1.0 and pretalx/pretalx-extended:2024.1.0-cron images
build.source, builds the pretalx/base:3.12-bookworm, pretalx/pretalx-extended:main-source-remote-cron, pretalx/standalone:main-source-{local,remote} and pretalx/standalone-extended:main-source-remote-cron images
build.standalone, builds the pretalx/pretalx:2024.1.0, pretalx/standalone:2024.1.0 and pretalx/standalone-extended:2024.1.0{,-cron} images

compose/

Compose overlays for running locally and/or behind a Traefik reverse proxy.

local.yml, overlay to add a local listening port for the web container
traefik.yml, overlay to add the Traefik-specific external web network and associated configuration labels

compose/build/

Compose overlays to exemplify the build of certain image variants.

base.yml, builds the base context, used for the pretalx/base image
default.yml, builds the image from the default context, used for the pretalx/pretalx image
extended.yml, builds the image from the extended context, based on default, used for the pretalx/pretalx-extended image
extended.cron.yml, builds the image from the cron context, based on extended, used for the pretalx/pretalx-extended image, tagged -cron

compose/source/

Compose overlays to build the pretalx application from its source code.

extended.cron.remote.yml, builds an extended image from the latest, remotely pulled git source, with cron and plugins
standalone.local.yml, builds a standalone image from locally available sources
standalone.remote.yml, builds a standalone image from a remote git source
standalone.extended.cron.remote.yml, extends the previous image with cron and plugins

compose/standalone/

default.yml, a standalone image, equivalent with the pretalx/standalone image from CI
extended.yml, a standalone image extended with plugins
extended.cron.yml, a standalone image extended with cron and plugins

config/

Configuration manifests of run-time components.

nginx.conf, configuration for Nginx that serves static assets and otherwise proxies to the application container
pretalx.cfg.example, depreciated, example of a configuration file to be used optionally, e.g. with the local overlay

context/

The Docker build contexts that define the various images supported by this repository.

context/base/

Dockerfile.debian, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx, used for the pretalx/base image
entrypoint.sh, script to be evaluated at runtime when the container starts; prepared for all variants; expects an argument

context/cron/

crontab, configuration to run periodic tasks; adapted for use inside a container
Dockerfile.debian, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx, includes cron

context/default/

Dockerfile.debian, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx, used for the pretalx/pretalx image

context/extended/

Dockerfile.debian, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx, includes plugins

context/source/

The source contexts are used to build pretalx from locally or remotely available source code.

context/source/extended.cron/

crontab, configuration to run periodic tasks; adapted for use inside a container
Dockerfile.debian.remote, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx

context/source/standalone/

Dockerfile.debian.local, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx; continuation of the old pretalx/standalone image
Dockerfile.debian.remote, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx; extended with supervisor; used for the pretalx/standalone image
supervisord.conf, configuration to run multiple unprivileged processes in the same container

context/source/standalone.extended.cron/

crontab, configuration to run periodic tasks; adapted to be run via the supervisor
Dockerfile.debian.remote, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx, extended with cron and plugins
supervisord.conf, configuration to run multiple privileged and unprivileged processes in the same container; adapted for use with cron

context/standalone/

The standalone context is provided for compatibility with the pretalx/standalone image created with the pretalx-docker repository before 05.2024. These containers run both processes of the main Gunicorn process and the Celery task worker. This is useful for testing, but they cannot be scaled independently in a real-world scenario, why migration to the newer pretalx/pretalx image with running both processes in separate containers is recommended.

This depreciates the old standalone container, which was tightly coupled with source code in a git submodule, which has been depreciated. A new version that offers a migration path with a decoupled git repository is available in context/source/standalone/Dockerfile.debian.local.

context/standalone/default/

Dockerfile.debian, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx
supervisord.conf, configuration to run multiple unprivileged processes in the same container

context/standalone/extended/

Dockerfile.debian, Debian-based container image manifest for Pretalx, extended with plugins

context/standalone/extended.cron/

crontab, configuration to run periodic tasks; adapted to be run via the supervisor
Dockerfile.debian, container image manifest that adds plugins to Pretalx, extended with cron and plugins
supervisord.conf, configuration to run multiple privileged and unprivileged processes in the same container; adapted for use with cron

legacy/

docker-compose.build.yml.example, overlay example to build an pretalx-extended image from the extended context
docker-compose.env.example, Compose, Traefik and Postgres environment example
docker-compose.env.pretalx.example, Pretalx environment example
docker-compose.yml.example, Docker Compose manifest example

Please read on thorugh the following sections to find out how they interact with each other.

Installation

This repository follows the Pretalx installation instructions as closely as possible.

Installation — pretalx documentation

Configuration

The repository implements the dot env pattern to configure all application containers through environmental variables.

Copy the example and modify it according to your setup:

cp .env.example .env

The Pretalx image and version to pull or build are indicated at the top:

PRETALX_IMAGE, Pretalx Container image name
PRETALX_TAG, Pretalx Container image tag

Run-time variables

The setup uses all environmental variables used by Pretalx:

Configuration — pretalx documentation

You will likely want to uncomment and provide email settings to a live environment.

These variables configure the web proxy, the application processes and the database:

FQDN, fully-qualified domain name, used for the Host matcher in the traefik configuration and for the plugins images
POSTGRES_DB, Postgres database name
POSTGRES_USER, Postgres user name
POSTGRES_PASSWORD, Postgres user password
PRETALX_LOG_LEVEL, Gunicorn and Celery log level

The following variables are available to configure the Gunicorn web process:

GUNICORN_WORKERS
GUNICORN_MAX_REQUESTS
GUNICORN_MAX_REQUESTS_JITTER
GUNICORN_FORWARDED_ALLOW_IPS
GUNICORN_BIND_ADDR

Please refer to context/default/entrypoint.sh and the Gunicorn settings documentation about their usage.

Building

This repository is used for developing Container images from the source manifests present in the context/ directory.

It does not cover the use case of building a Pretalx development environment.

It is left for the curious reader to propose this with development containers directly to the pretalx/pretalx repository.

CI

We provide CI manifests to build and push container images to Docker Hub (docker.io) and to the GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io).

Find them in .github/workflows/.

build-and-push.yml, a generic build and push workflow that is called by other workflows and releases artifacts into Docker Hub and the GitHub Container Registry.
build.default.yml, builds the default context into a pretalx image.
build.plugins.yml, builds the plugins context into a pretalx-extended image.

The artifacts are published to:

Prerequisites

This setup was implemented with Docker Compose on a Rootless Podman context on a SELinux-enabled Linux host, using the Docker CLI with a context on the local socket of the Podman systemd user unit for educational purposes.

It also works with rootful or rootless Docker and rootful Podman respectively.

Optional: Using Rootless Podman with Docker Compose via a Docker Context

Using Podman and Docker Compose | Enable Sysadmin

$ systemctl --user start podman.service podman.socket
$ docker context create podman --docker 'host=tcp:///run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock'
$ docker context use podman
$ docker context ls
NAME       DESCRIPTION                               DOCKER ENDPOINT                            ERROR
default    Current DOCKER_HOST based configuration   unix:///var/run/docker.sock
podman *                                             unix:///run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock

Optional: Removing the SELinux compatibility, if not needed

If your system does not have SELinux enabled or you wish to use this only with the rootful tooling, remove the SELinux-specific configuration:

sed '/selinux/d' -i compose.yml

Optional: Work around BuildKit issues with caching and newer Docker features

The Docker Buildx BuildKit configuration does not allow to reuse cached image layers in subsequent build steps.

Docker build "FROM" Fails to search local images · Issue #795 · docker/buildx

Using Docker, Buildx and Compose to build all images locally (using cache)

To use this repository with Docker, Docker Compose and Docker Buildx, we need to switch back from BuildKit in a container to the default docker builder.

docker context use default
docker buildx ls
docker buildx use default

We can now locally conduct layered image builds with Docker, Compose through Buildx.

Using rootless Podman, Buildx and Compose to build all images locally (using cache)

To use this repository with rootless Podman, Docker Compose and Docker Buildx, we need to disable BuildKit entirely

docker context use podman
export DOCKER_BUILDKIT=0

We are making good use of YAML Fragments in the Compose files. Be sure to learn what they do, which will aid you in reading the manifests.

Feel free to adapt these examples to your liking. E.g. you may need to copy and paste the adaptations into the single manifest, e.g. to run without -f modifiers, or have the main file called docker-compose.yml for the ancient version of docker-compose. See the legacy section for this use case.

Build-time variables

To start building the images locally, copy the build environment example:

cp .env.build.example .env.build

The variables present in .env.build should not be modified and can be considered as sane defaults.

The values are (hopefully) mostly self-explaining. Those you may want to experiment with changing are:

PRETALX_VERSION, the Pretalx version to install into the image
BASE_IMAGE, the base image to build from
BASE_TAG, the base image tag to build from
PRETALX_BASE_IMAGE, the name of the pretalx base image to build
PRETALX_BASE_TAG, the tag of the pretalx base image to build
PRETALX_IMAGE, the name of the pretalx image to build
PRETALX_TAG, the tag of the pretalx image to build

Local building of the Container images with using the Compose manifests

Use the build* scripts in the bin/ repository to conduct local builds, which package the most common use cases.

bin/build
bin/build.standalone
bin/build.source

The commands below help to develop and debug the Compose manifests and are provided as a reference:

docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml --env-file .env.build -f compose/build/default.yml build app

This will build the image with the name ${PRETALX_IMAGE}:${PRETALX_TAG}, as specified by the inferred image: directive.

Building different combinations of overlays

There is a need to accommodate for the presence of Pretalx plugins together with the application.

This is achieved by creating overlay OCI file system layers and building a custom container image based on the default build context.

docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml -f compose/local.yml --env-file .env.build -f compose/build/extended.yml config

Or in a live environment:

docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml -f compose/traefik.yml --env-file .env.build -f compose/build/extended.yml config

All Compose commands in place of config apply from here.

If you had successfully built your local Pretalx image, you could build an image extended with plugins with:

docker compose -f compose.yml --env-file .env.build -f compose/build/extended.yml build app

Running

During development, you may want to watch your container scheduler for the health of the containers from another shell:

watch -n 0.5 docker ps

Locally

When you are done with building and preloading the images into your container engine's image store, you can start the composition with:

docker compose --env-file .env -f compose.yml -f compose/local.yml --env-file .env.build -f compose/build/extended.yml up -d

Continue to Initialisation below.

Local live-like environment

If you were running a local traefik instance on a local web network, maybe even with a Smallstep CA for provisioning ACME certificates for your .internal network, you could add the network and necessary labels with:

docker compose -f compose.yml -f compose/local.yml -f compose/traefik.yml config

Live

To run this in a live environment, it is not needed to build the images locally. They will be provided by the container registry.

This further assumes the presence of a fully configured traefik instance connected to the web network.

Review the configuration you are about to launch:

docker compose -f compose.yml -f compose/traefik.yml config

Launch a selected configuration:

docker compose -f compose.yml -f compose/traefik.yml --env-file .env.build -f compose/build/extended.yml up -d

Continue to Initialisation below.

Management commands

The entrypoint provides convenience commands to run the Container with different processes from the same image in the same environment.

migrate launches the database migrations and initiates a rebuild.
rebuild regenerates static Django assets in $PRETALX_FILESYSTEM_STATIC, but only once. Can be --forced.
gunicorn launches the Gunicorn Python web server to serve Pretalx. Can be configured with the GUNICORN_* environmental variables mentioned above.
celery launches the Celery task worker.
cron launches the Cron daemon to schedule the commands in the context/default/crontab.
supervisor launches the Supervisor daemon to run multiple long-running processes in the same container.

All other commands are passed down to Pretalx.

Management commands — pretalx documentation

They can be executed from within a running app container with python calling the pretalx module and passing the name of the task as an argument, in this example showmigrations:

docker compose exec app python -m pretalx showmigrations

This command does not need to have the -f compose.{local,traefik,build/default,build/extended}.yml arguments for defining overlays present, as it only modifies runtime state of an already existing container.

Initialisation

You can start configuring your instance, when your web container shows as healthy in docker ps.

Invoke the initialisation command:

docker compose exec app python -m pretalx init

You will see this configuration summary and the initialisation wizard:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ┏━━━━━━━━━━┓  pretalx v2024.1.0                                                 ┃
┃ ┃  ┌─·──╮  ┃  Settings:                                                         ┃
┃ ┃  │  O │  ┃  Database:  pretalx (postgresql)                                   ┃
┃ ┃  │ ┌──╯  ┃  Logging:   /data/logs                                             ┃
┃ ┃  └─┘     ┃  Root dir:  /pretalx/.local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pretalx   ┃
┃ ┗━━━┯━┯━━━━┛  Python:    /usr/local/bin/python                                  ┃
┃     ╰─╯       Plugins:   pretalx_pages, pretalx_public_voting, prtx_faq         ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Welcome to pretalx! This is my initialization command, please use it only once.
You can abort this command at any time using C-c, and it will save no data.

Let's get you a user with the right to create new events and access every event on this pretalx instance.
E-mail:

After finishing the questionnaire, you can login at http://localhost:8080/orga/.

As you can see, we are not using a settings file. This is not needed, due to following the dot env pattern for 12factor.net container-native applications. An example for pretalx.cfg and how to add it to the containers is available in compose/local.yml and in the config/ subdirectory, in case needed.

Please note: Users of the standalone images need to manually run the database migrations, before the application can be initialised. Follow these steps instead:
docker compose run --rm app migrate
docker compose run --rm -it app init

Upgrading

In case the images used in this composition are updated in the container registry, you can update your installation with few interventions:

Change the PRETALX_TAG to the newer version in the .env file
Pull new images with docker compose pull
Recreate existing containers with docker compose up -d

Note: Users of the standalone image also need to run docker compose run --rm app migrate between the steps 2. and 3.

Migrating from the old `pretalx/standalone` container image/build …

The repository has seen a major refactor in May 2024. While it depreciates some of the original developments, it continues their work and seeks compatibility with the development patterns that were present. While there are many ways in which the components of the repository can be combined and adjusted, we would like to give some hints on common migration paths.

More detailed instructions will be added here, when we find them.

… to the `pretalx/pretalx` image

The pretalx/pretalx image does not bundle the supervisor, why you have to run two independent containers for the application server (Gunicorn) and the task worker (Celery). Please read compose.yml carefully on how to set this up.

A more concise example may be given in the legacy/ folder.

Configuration values from pretalx.cfg have been converted into environment variables in .env. For future-compatibility, you are advised to perform the migration. It is still possible to mount a configuration file at /pretalx/.pretalx.cfg. Please refer to local.yml and standalone.extended.cron.remote.yml for examples.

… to the updated `pretalx/standalone` image

As theory has it, you should be able to pull newly-tagged pretalx/standalone images and use them as a drop in replacement. Please leave us an issue, if that is not the case.

… to a custom source build based on the new `pretalx/standalone` image

Please feel free to explore the range of examples that are given in the build/ contexts to evaluate how you can reproduce the previous local source builds. context/source/standalone/Dockerfile.debian.local tries to be as close as possible to the previous setup that was using a git submodule to build images from.

While this pattern has been depreciated for regular image builds, the previous way has been continued and tested with the others. Please report back any issue that you may encounter.

Recycle

There are few life-cycle commands, which can help you reduce local resource usage. They are:

docker compose down --remove-orphans
docker images | grep '<none>' | awk '{ print $3 }' | xargs docker rmi

You can now start building images and creating containers from scratch.

To delete eventual state, you can run either of these commands:

docker compose down --volumes
docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -q | grep pretalx)

Remove .env when you need to reset the whole setup completely.

docker compose down -v --remove-orphans
rm .env

To also clean your working directory, you can run:

bin/clean

To also clean your container engine's build cache, also run:

docker buildx prune -a

Legacy

The repository contains an example configuration for supporting the legacy version of Docker Compose. Due to the different feature set, an independent manifest is used.

Please refer to legacy/ to learn more.

Authors

Bastian Hodapp
Bruno Morisson
Daniel Goodman
Hadrien
Ian Foster
Johan Van de Wauw
Jon Richter
Jonathan Günz
Luca
Lukas
Marcus Müller
Matt Yaraskavitch
MaxR
Michal Stanke
Simeon Keske
Simon
Simon Hötten
Timon Erhart
Tobias Kunze
geleeroyale
jascha ehrenreich
kuhball
plaste
realitygaps

License

CC0

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 185 Commits
.github		.github
bin		bin
compose		compose
config		config
context		context
legacy		legacy
.env.build.example		.env.build.example
.env.example		.env.example
.gitignore		.gitignore
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
compose.yml		compose.yml

License

allmende/pretalx-docker

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pretalx-docker

Contents

Components

Directories

Files

.github/

.github/workflows/

bin/

compose/

compose/build/

compose/source/

compose/standalone/

config/

context/

context/base/

context/cron/

context/default/

context/extended/

context/source/

context/source/extended.cron/

context/source/standalone/

context/source/standalone.extended.cron/

context/standalone/

context/standalone/default/

context/standalone/extended/

context/standalone/extended.cron/

legacy/

Installation

Configuration

Run-time variables

Building

CI

Prerequisites

Using Docker, Buildx and Compose to build all images locally (using cache)

Using rootless Podman, Buildx and Compose to build all images locally (using cache)

Build-time variables

Local building of the Container images with using the Compose manifests

Building different combinations of overlays

Running

Locally

Local live-like environment

Live

Management commands

Initialisation

Upgrading

Migrating from the old pretalx/standalone container image/build …

… to the pretalx/pretalx image

… to the updated pretalx/standalone image

… to a custom source build based on the new pretalx/standalone image

Recycle

Legacy

Authors

License

Copyright

About

Resources

License

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Releases 2

Packages 0

Languages

Migrating from the old `pretalx/standalone` container image/build …

… to the `pretalx/pretalx` image

… to the updated `pretalx/standalone` image

… to a custom source build based on the new `pretalx/standalone` image

Packages