Advanced installation
You can always install Dokku straight from the latest - potentially unstable - master branch via the following Bash command:
# using a branch results in installing from source
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dokku/dokku/master/bootstrap.sh;
sudo DOKKU_BRANCH=master bash bootstrap.sh
Development
If you plan on developing Dokku, the easiest way to install from your own repository is cloning the repository and calling the install script. Example:
The Makefile allows source URLs to be overridden to include customizations from your own repositories. The DOCKER_URL, PLUGN_URL, SSHCOMMAND_URL and STACK_URL environment variables may be set to override the defaults (see the Makefile for how these apply). Example:
sudo SSHCOMMAND_URL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourusername/sshcommand/master/sshcommand make install
Bootstrap a server from your own repository
The bootstrap script allows the Dokku repository URL to be overridden to bootstrap a host from your own clone of Dokku using the DOKKU_REPO environment variable. Example:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dokku/dokku/master/bootstrap.sh;
chmod +x bootstrap.sh
sudo DOKKU_REPO=https://github.com/yourusername/dokku.git DOKKU_BRANCH=master ./bootstrap.sh
Custom Herokuish build
Dokku ships with a pre-built version of version of the Herokuish component by default. If you want to build your own version you can specify that with an environment variable.
git clone https://github.com/dokku/dokku.git
cd dokku
sudo BUILD_STACK=true STACK_URL=https://github.com/gliderlabs/herokuish.git make install
Skipping Herokuish installation
The Herokuish package is recommended but not required if not using Heroku buildpacks for deployment. Debian-based OS users can run the bootstrap installer via sudo DOKKU_NO_INSTALL_RECOMMENDS=" --no-install-recommends " bash bootstrap.sh to skip the dependency. Please note that this will also skip installation of other recommended dependencies.
Configuring an unattended installation
Once Dokku is installed, you'll want to configure the virtualhost setup as well as the push user. If you do not, your installation will be considered incomplete and you will not be able to deploy applications.
For Debian, unattended installation is described Debian installation guide.
Set up a domain using your preferred vendor and a wildcard domain pointing to the host running Dokku. You can manage this global domain using the domains plugin.
Follow the user management documentation in order to add SSH keys for users to Dokku, or to give other Unix accounts access to Dokku.
VMs with less than 1 GB of memory
Having less than 1 GB of system memory available for Dokku and its containers may result in unexpected errors, such as ! [remote rejected] master -> master (pre-receive hook declined) during installation of NPM dependencies (https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/3867).
To work around this issue, it might suffice to augment the Linux swap file size to a maximum of twice the physical memory size.
To resize the swap file of a 512 MB machine to 1 GB, follow these steps while in SSH within your machine: