Install with Docker Compose

InfraInbox ships as one Docker image plus PostgreSQL. There is no other infrastructure to run: no message broker, no cache, no separate identity server.

Note

Public images are not published yet — they arrive with InfraInbox’s first release. Until then, build the image yourself (make image in the repository) and point INFRAINBOX_IMAGE at what you built.

What you need

• A Linux host (or a VM) with Docker Engine and the Compose plugin.
• A hostname the server will answer to. A private IP or a .local/.home.arpa name is fine for a LAN-only instance; a real DNS name is needed only if you want a browser-trusted certificate (see TLS and reverse proxies).
• Nothing else. PostgreSQL runs in its own container and needs no separate setup.

1. Get the compose files

Clone the repository, or copy just the deploy/compose/ directory from it:

git clone https://github.com/infrainbox/infrainbox
cd infrainbox/deploy/compose

2. Configure

cp .env.example .env
printf 'POSTGRES_PASSWORD=%s\n'      "$(openssl rand -hex 24)" >> .env
printf 'INFRAINBOX_DB_PASSWORD=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 24)" >> .env

Then open .env and set INFRAINBOX_PUBLIC_URL to the address you and your phone will reach this server at, for example https://infrainbox.example.com or https://192.168.1.20:8443. Include the port unless it’s 443.

Caution

INFRAINBOX_PUBLIC_URL is the setting to get right. Sign-in, the pairing QR code and every generated ingest URL are built from it. A request that arrives under a different hostname gets an HTTP 421, which looks like “the server is up but broken” rather than a configuration hint.

None of the three values above has a default — Compose refuses to start until all three are set, so there’s no InfraInbox install running on a blank or guessable password.

To let people sign in through your own identity provider or GitHub, see Sign in with an identity provider, and check it with infrainbox admin idp test <id>. The first administrator is created with the setup link either way.

To let people reset a forgotten password themselves, give the server a mail relay: see Email. Without one, infrainbox admin reset-password <user> does it from a shell. (infrainbox admin invites create is for InfraInbox Cloud’s invite-only sign-up and refuses to run on a self-hosted server.)

3. Start it

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs infrainbox | grep 'setup token'

The second command prints a one-time link, something like:

https://infrainbox.example.com/setup#token=...

Open it in a browser to create the first administrator account. The token works once, while the instance has no user yet; if the log has scrolled past, reissue one:

docker compose exec infrainbox /infrainbox admin setup-token

4. Check it works

• docker compose ps shows both infrainbox and postgres as healthy.
• The setup link loads a sign-in/setup page instead of a certificate error or a connection refusal.
• After creating the admin account, the dashboard loads at INFRAINBOX_PUBLIC_URL.

By default the app terminates TLS itself with a self-signed certificate, so your browser will warn about it once. See TLS and reverse proxies for a browser-trusted certificate, and Core concepts for what to do next.

Where your data lives

Two named volumes:

Volume	Holds
postgres-data	Everything in the database: events, incidents, sources, destinations, settings.
infrainbox-data	The master encryption key and, unless you mount your own, the generated TLS certificate.

Back up both, and keep the backups apart from each other — see Backups and upgrades.

Bring your own PostgreSQL

To use a PostgreSQL ≥ 16 you already run instead of the bundled one, drop the postgres service and point INFRAINBOX_DATABASE_URL at your server. Create the application’s login yourself first — it needs NOSUPERUSER, NOBYPASSRLS and CREATEROLE (the last so InfraInbox’s own migrations can create the internal roles they use):

CREATE ROLE infrainbox WITH LOGIN NOSUPERUSER NOBYPASSRLS NOCREATEDB CREATEROLE PASSWORD '<password>';
CREATE DATABASE infrainbox OWNER infrainbox;
\c infrainbox
ALTER SCHEMA public OWNER TO infrainbox;

Nothing more is needed: InfraInbox’s own migrations create their remaining internal roles and grants. See Configuration reference for INFRAINBOX_DATABASE_URL.