Wanderer Setup using Quadlets

[hhornburg]

In case anyone is interested, here are my setup notes for using Quadlets instead of docker compose. Happy to get feedback if you would do things differently :)

• create quadlet files in /etc/containers/systemd/users
• create folders for volumes
• enable container access to volume file locations:
  • run sudo semanage fcontext -a -f a -t container_file_t -r 's0' '/your/volume/path(/.*)?'
  • run sudo restorecon -Rv /your/volume/path/
• run sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER
• run systemctl --user daemon-reload
• test if the website comes up fine: systemctl --user start wanderer-web
• reboot server to test if website still comes up fine

Quadlet Files

Adapt files to match setup:

• domain
• keys
• volume locations

wanderer-search.container

[Unit]
After=wanderer-network.service
Requires=wanderer-network.service

[Container]
ContainerName=wanderer-search
Environment=MEILI_URL=http://search:7700  MEILI_MASTER_KEY=vODkljPcfFANYNepCHyDyGjzAMPcdHnrb6X5KyXQPWo MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS=true
HealthCmd=curl --fail http://localhost:7700/health || exit 1
HealthInterval=15s
HealthRetries=10
HealthStartPeriod=20s
HealthTimeout=10s
Image=docker.io/getmeili/meilisearch:v1.11.3
Network=systemd-wanderer
PublishPort=7700:7700
Volume=/your/volume/path/data.ms:/meili_data/data.ms

[Service]
Restart=always

wanderer-db.container

[Unit]
After=wanderer-network.service wanderer-search.service
Requires=wanderer-network.service wanderer-search.service

[Container]
ContainerName=wanderer-db
Environment=MEILI_URL=http://wanderer-search:7700  MEILI_MASTER_KEY=vODkljPcfFANYNepCHyDyGjzAMPcdHnrb6X5KyXQPWo POCKETBASE_ENCRYPTION_KEY=fde406459dc1f6ca6f348e1f44a9a2af ORIGIN=http://localhost:3000
HealthCmd=wget --spider -q http://localhost:8090/health || exit 1
HealthInterval=15s
HealthRetries=10
HealthStartPeriod=20s
HealthTimeout=10s
Image=docker.io/library/flomp/wanderer-db
Network=systemd-wanderer
PublishPort=8090:8090
Volume=/your/volume/path/pb_data:/pb_data

[Service]
Restart=always

wanderer-web.container

[Unit]
After=wanderer-network.service wanderer-search.service wanderer-db.service
Requires=wanderer-network.service wanderer-search.service wanderer-db.service

[Container]
ContainerName=wanderer-web
Environment=MEILI_URL=http://wanderer-search:7700  MEILI_MASTER_KEY=vODkljPcfFANYNepCHyDyGjzAMPcdHnrb6X5KyXQPWo ORIGIN=http://localhost:3000 BODY_SIZE_LIMIT=Infinity PUBLIC_POCKETBASE_URL=http://wanderer-db:8090 PUBLIC_DISABLE_SIGNUP=false UPLOAD_FOLDER=/app/uploads UPLOAD_USER UPLOAD_PASSWORD PUBLIC_OVERPASS_API_URL=https://overpass-api.de PUBLIC_VALHALLA_URL=https://valhalla1.openstreetmap.de PUBLIC_NOMINATIM_URL=https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org
HealthCmd=curl --fail http://localhost:3000/ || exit 1
HealthInterval=15s
HealthRetries=10
HealthStartPeriod=20s
HealthTimeout=10s
Image=docker.io/library/flomp/wanderer-web
Network=systemd-wanderer
PublishPort=3000:3000
Volume=/your/volume/path/uploads:/app/uploads

[Service]
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target default.target

wanderer.network

[Network]
Driver=bridge

[schaten]

Hi, just wanted to share that I also use this approach!
Some comments, which might be helpful:

Control rootless containers as root

This just simplifies the two-step processs of 1) becoming the user running the containers,
and 2) issuing a systemctl --user restart wanderer-web call.

sudo systemctl --machine wanderer@ --user restart wanderer-web

Avoid healthcheck logspam

Add

[engine]
healthcheck_events = false

to your .config/containers/containers.conf

Missing dbus etc messages

One needs to make sure that DBUS is available for systemd.
The issue arises when you create a new user explicitly for wanderer,
on Debian systems. I think it might not occur with fedora because it's more recent.

This can be for example done by pasting this into the ~/.profile of the container user.

export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/user/$UID"
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="unix:path=\${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/bus"

this also allows just using sudo -i wanderer to control the container.
Otherwise one needs for example machinectl shell test@.

Be careful when adding and deleting users

When I tested the quadlet setup, I automated this and then deleted the user again to see if my automation works.
This cost me a few hours because systemd didn't start a new systemd-user daemon for my 'recycled' user!
I needed to reboot the server to be able to reuse my previous wanderer-username.

Writing this here in the hope that it maybe one day saves someone from this trouble. ;)

Environment files for quadlets

Instead of duplicating the environment variables, I use lines like this in the container definitions:

EnvironmentFile=search_env
EnvironmentFile=db_env

The corresponding files are in .config/containers/systemd, e.g
.config/containers/systemd/web_env.

General plan of quadlets and question

After generating these quadlet files

• I did this from scratch, just like you, before this thread was created -
  I'm wondering how to handle updates and simplify the installation.

I mean, the effort is in principle quite low, one can look at the history of docker-compose.yml and apply these changes to the quadlets.

However it might be nice to distribute a podman-quadlet file?
https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-quadlet-install.1.html

This would save people from manually doing this translation

Then again, I really don't understand why podman needed to re-invent docker-compose.
Because, that's what these quadlet definition files look like to me!

What do you think?

Best