Install with docker run

For operators who already have managed Postgres 16 and Redis 7 (RDS, Cloud SQL, a self-managed Postgres…) and only want to run the application container.

Prerequisites

• Postgres 16 with the pgvector extension installed and an empty schema. The application applies the Prisma migrations at startup.
• Redis 7 reachable from the container.
• The 3 required variables: ADMIN_DATABASE_URL, REDIS_URL, AUTH_SECRET (32+ characters).

Running it

docker pull ghcr.io/va360labs/didacta-community:0.1.0-beta.9

# Volume for uploads + the auto-generated encryption key + the
# auto-generated password of the didacta_app runtime role.
docker volume create didacta_data

docker run -d \
  --name didacta-app \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -p 4000:4000 \
  -v didacta_data:/app/data \
  -e ADMIN_DATABASE_URL='postgresql://USER:PASS@HOST:5432/didacta?schema=public' \
  -e REDIS_URL='redis://HOST:6379' \
  -e AUTH_SECRET='any-random-string-of-32+-characters' \
  -e STORAGE_DRIVER=local \
  -e STORAGE_ROOT=/app/data/storage \
  -e NODE_ENV=production \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/va360labs/didacta-community:0.1.0-beta.9

ADMIN_DATABASE_URL is the superuser/owner account you already had: the entrypoint uses it only for migrations + RLS + grants. Do not set DATABASE_URL — the entrypoint derives it on its own for the didacta_app runtime role (no BYPASSRLS, real RLS isolation), with a password generated and persisted in didacta_data on first start. Details in Database.

In practice, the didacta_data volume is not optional

It holds the uploaded files — courses, certificates, evidence — and an encryption key generated on first start for secrets at rest. Without that volume mounted, everything is lost when the container is recreated.

If you use S3 instead of local disk (drop STORAGE_DRIVER/STORAGE_ROOT and add S3_ENDPOINT, S3_BUCKET, S3_ACCESS_KEY, S3_SECRET_KEY), keep the volume mounted anyway for the encryption key.

Verifying

docker logs -f didacta-app                  # bootstrap + Prisma migrations
curl -fsS http://localhost:4000/healthz     # must return 200

Then open http://localhost:3000 and follow the setup wizard.

Useful optional variables

Variable	What it is for
S3_ENDPOINT, S3_BUCKET, S3_ACCESS_KEY, S3_SECRET_KEY	S3-compatible storage (MinIO, AWS, Hetzner…).
SMTP_HOST, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_USER, SMTP_PASS, SMTP_FROM	Transactional email. Without these, emails are written to the logs but not sent.
DIDACTA_LICENSE_KEY	Signed JWT that activates Enterprise capabilities. Without it, pure Community mode.
METRICS_TOKEN	Bearer token protecting /metrics (Prometheus). Empty = public endpoint.

The one-to-one reference for every variable is in Environment variables.