Moodle on Alpine Linux

Moodle setup for Docker, build on Alpine Linux. The image is only +/- 70MB large.

Repository: https://github.com/erseco/alpine-moodle

• Built on the lightweight image https://github.com/erseco/alpine-php-webserver
• Very small Docker image size (+/-70MB)
• Uses PHP 8.3 for better performance, lower cpu usage & memory footprint
• Support for HA installations: php-redis, php-ldap (also with self-signed certs)
• Multi-arch support: 386, amd64, arm/v6, arm/v7, arm64, ppc64le, s390x
• Optimized for 100 concurrent users
• Optimized to only use resources when there's traffic (by using PHP-FPM's ondemand PM)
• Use of runit instead of supervisord to reduce memory footprint
• Configured cron to run as non-privileged user gliderlabs/docker-alpine#381 (comment)
• docker-compose sample with PostgreSQL and Redis
• Configuration via ENV variables
• Easily upgradable to new moodle versions
• The servers Nginx, PHP-FPM run under a non-privileged user (nobody) to make it more secure
• The logs of all the services are redirected to the output of the Docker container (visible with docker logs -f <container name>)
• Follows the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) to make it easy to understand and adjust the image to your needs

Usage

Start the Docker containers:

docker-compose up

Login on the system using the provided credentials (ENV vars)

Running Commands as Root

In certain situations, you might need to run commands as root within your Moodle container, for example, to install additional packages. You can do this using the docker-compose exec command with the --user root option. Here's how:

docker-compose exec --user root moodle sh

Configuration

Define the ENV variables in docker-compose.yml file

Variable Name	Default	Description
LANG	en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE	en_US:en
SITE_URL	http://localhost	Sets the public site url
REVERSEPROXY	false	Enable when setting up advanced reverse proxy
SSLPROXY	false	Disable SSL proxy to avoid site loop. Ej. Cloudfare
REDIS_HOST		Set the host of the redis instance. Ej. redis
DB_TYPE	pgsql	mysqli - pgsql - mariadb
DB_HOST	postgres	DB_HOST Ej. db container name
DB_PORT	5432	Postgres=5432 - MySQL=3306
DB_NAME	moodle
DB_USER	moodle
DB_FETCHBUFFERSIZE		Set to 0 if using PostgresSQL poolers like PgBouncer in 'transaction' mode
DB_DBHANDLEOPTIONS	false	Set to true if using PostgresSQL poolers like PgBouncer which does not support sending options
DB_HOST_REPLICA		Database hostname of the read-only replica database
DB_PORT_REPLICA		Database port of replica, left it empty to be same as DB_PORT
DB_USER_REPLICA		Database login username of replica, left it empty to be same as DB_USER
DB_PASS_REPLICA		Database login password of replica, left it empty to be same as DB_PASS
DB_PREFIX	mdl_	Database prefix. WARNING: don't use numeric values or moodle won't start
MY_CERTIFICATES	none	Trusted LDAP certificate or chain getting through base64 encode
MOODLE_EMAIL	user@example.com
MOODLE_LANGUAGE	en
MOODLE_SITENAME	New-Site
MOODLE_USERNAME	moodleuser
MOODLE_PASSWORD	PLEASE_CHANGEME
SMTP_HOST	smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT	587
SMTP_USER	your_email@gmail.com
SMTP_PASSWORD	your_password
SMTP_PROTOCOL	tls
MOODLE_MAIL_NOREPLY_ADDRESS	noreply@localhost
MOODLE_MAIL_PREFIX	[moodle]
AUTO_UPDATE_MOODLE	true	Set to false to disable performing update of Moodle (e.g. plugins) at docker start
DEBUG	false
client_max_body_size	50M
post_max_size	50M
upload_max_filesize	50M
max_input_vars	5000
PRE_CONFIGURE_COMMANDS		Commands to run before starting the configuration
POST_CONFIGURE_COMMANDS		Commands to run after finished the configuration

Pre and Post Configuration Commands

You can define commands to be executed before and after the configuration of Moodle using the PRE_CONFIGURE_COMMANDS and POST_CONFIGURE_COMMANDS environment variables. These can be useful for tasks such as installing additional packages or running scripts.

Example docker-compose.yml configuration:

version: '3'
services:
  moodle:
    image: erseco/alpine-moodle
    environment:
      SITE_URL: "http://localhost"
      DB_TYPE: "pgsql"
      DB_HOST: "postgres"
      DB_PORT: 5432
      DB_NAME: "moodle"
      DB_USER: "moodle"
      MOODLE_USERNAME: "admin"
      MOODLE_PASSWORD: "admin"
      PRE_CONFIGURE_COMMANDS: "echo 'Running pre-configure commands'"
      POST_CONFIGURE_COMMANDS: "echo 'Running post-configure commands'"

Installing Plugins from URL

You can also install Moodle plugins directly from a URL using the install_plugin.php script. This can be useful for automating plugin installations during container setup.

Example command:

php admin/cli/install_plugin.php --url=https://github.com/mohessaid/moodle_local_plugin/archive/refs/heads/master.zip --run

This command will download and install the specified plugin into your Moodle instance.