Deploying to Dokku
Note
This walkthrough uses the hostname dokku.me in commands. When deploying to your own server, you should set the DOKKU_DOMAIN value in the Vagrantfile before you initialize the Vagrant VM.
Deploy tutorial
Once you have configured Dokku with at least one user, you can deploy applications using git push. To quickly see Dokku deployment in action, try using the Heroku Ruby on Rails "Getting Started" app.
# from your local machine
# SSH access to github must be enabled on this host
git clone https://github.com/heroku/ruby-getting-started
Create the app
SSH into the Dokku host and create the application as follows:
Create the backing services
Dokku by default does not provide datastores (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL) on a newly created app. You can add datastore support by installing plugins, and the Dokku project provides official plugins for common datastores.
The Getting Started app requires a PostgreSQL service, so install the plugin and create the related service as follows:
# on the Dokku host
# install the postgres plugin
# plugin installation requires root, hence the user change
sudo dokku plugin:install https://github.com/dokku/dokku-postgres.git
# create a postgres service with the name railsdatabase
dokku postgres:create railsdatabase
Each service may take a few moments to create.
Linking backing services to applications
Once the services have been created, you then set the DATABASE_URL environment variable by linking the service, as follows:
# on the Dokku host
# each official datastore offers a `link` method to link a service to any application
dokku postgres:link railsdatabase ruby-getting-started
Dokku supports linking a single service to multiple applications as well as linking only one service per application.
Deploy the app
Warning
Your app should respect the PORT environment variable, otherwise it may not respond to web requests. You can find more information in the port management documentation.**
Now you can deploy the ruby-getting-started app to your Dokku server. All you have to do is add a remote to name the app. Applications are created on-the-fly on the Dokku server.
# from your local machine
# the remote username *must* be dokku or pushes will fail
cd ruby-getting-started
git remote add dokku dokku@dokku.me:ruby-getting-started
git push dokku master
Note
Some tools may not support the short-upstream syntax referenced above, and you may need to prefix
the upstream with the scheme ssh:// like so: ssh://dokku@dokku.me:ruby-getting-started
Please see the Git documentation for more details.
Note
Your private key should be registered with ssh-agent in your local development environment. If you get a permission denied error when pushing, you can register your private key as follows: ssh-add -k ~/<your private key>.
After running git push dokku master, you should have output similar to this in your terminal:
Counting objects: 231, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (162/162), done.
Writing objects: 100% (231/231), 36.96 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 231 (delta 93), reused 147 (delta 53)
-----> Cleaning up...
-----> Building ruby-getting-started from herokuish...
-----> Adding BUILD_ENV to build environment...
-----> Ruby app detected
-----> Compiling Ruby/Rails
-----> Using Ruby version: ruby-2.2.1
-----> Installing dependencies using 1.9.7
Running: bundle install --without development:test --path vendor/bundle --binstubs vendor/bundle/bin -j4 --deployment
Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/...........
Fetching version metadata from https://rubygems.org/...
Fetching dependency metadata from https://rubygems.org/..
Using rake 10.4.2
...
=====> Application deployed:
http://ruby-getting-started.dokku.me
Once the deploy is complete, the application's web URL will be generated as above.
Dokku supports deploying applications via Heroku buildpacks with Herokuish, as well as by using a project's Dockerfile.
Skipping deployment
If you only want to rebuild and tag a container, you can skip the deployment phase by setting $DOKKU_SKIP_DEPLOY to true by running:
Redeploying or restarting
If you need to redeploy or restart your app:
See the process scaling documentation for more information.
Deploying with private Git submodules
Dokku uses Git locally (i.e. not a Docker image) to build its own copy of your app repo, including submodules, as the dokku user. This means that in order to deploy private Git submodules, you need to put your deploy key in /home/dokku/.ssh/ and potentially add github.com (or your VCS host key) into /home/dokku/.ssh/known_hosts. You can use the following test to confirm your setup is correct:
# on the Dokku host
su - dokku
ssh-keyscan -t rsa github.com >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
ssh -T git@github.com
Warning
if the buildpack or Dockerfile build process require SSH key access for other reasons, the above may not always apply.
Deploying to subdomains
If you do not enter a fully qualified domain name when pushing your app, Dokku deploys the app to <remotename>.yourdomain.tld as follows:
You can also specify the fully qualified name as follows:
This is useful when you want to deploy to the root domain:
# from your local machine
# the remote username *must* be dokku or pushes will fail
git remote add dokku dokku@dokku.me:dokku.me
git push dokku master
... deployment ...
remote: -----> Application deployed:
remote: http://dokku.me
Dokku/Docker container management compatibility
Dokku is, at its core, a Docker container manager. Thus, it does not necessarily play well with other out-of-band processes interacting with the Docker daemon.
Prior to every deployment, Dokku will execute a cleanup function. As of 0.5.x, the cleanup removes all containers with the dokku label where the status is either dead or exited (previous versions would remove all dead or exited containers). The cleanup function also removes all images with dangling status.
Adding deploy users
See the user management documentation.
Default vhost
See the nginx documentation.
Deploying non-master branch
See the Git documentation.
Dockerfile deployment
See the Dockerfile documentation.
Image tagging
See the image tagging documentation.
Specifying a custom buildpack
See the buildpack documentation.
Removing a deployed app
See the application management documentation.
Renaming a deployed app
See the application management documentation.
Zero downtime deploy
See the zero-downtime deploy documentation.