Setup with Docker

This page contains instructions for setting up Meowlnir in Docker.

Requirements

• Docker
• A Matrix homeserver that supports application services (e.g. Synapse) You need access to register an appservice, which usually involves editing the homeserver config file.

Setup

Docker images are hosted on dock.mau.dev. Available docker tags are generally :latest, :git tag, :git commit-amd64 and :git commit-arm64. The latest and git tag specific docker tags are manifests that contain both amd64 and arm64 images. :latest points at the latest commit, not the latest release.

0. Create a directory for Meowlnir and cd into it: mkdir meowlnir && cd meowlnir.
1. Pull the docker image with docker pull dock.mau.dev/maunium/meowlnir:<version>. Replace <version> with the version you want to run (e.g. latest or v0.6.0).
2. Follow the configuration instructions to create a config file and registration.
   • To generate the example config using the -e flag mentioned in the docs, run the container with /usr/bin/meowlnir -e as arguments:

     docker run --rm -v `pwd`:/data:z dock.mau.dev/maunium/meowlnir:<version> /usr/bin/meowlnir -e
     

   • Keep in mind that localhost is not the correct address inside Docker (unless using network=host mode). Usually you should have Meowlnir and homeserver in the same Docker network, and use the container names as addresses (e.g. http://meowlnir:29339 and http://synapse:8008).
3. Register the registration file with your homeserver (see Registering appservices in the bridge docs for details).
4. Run Meowlnir:

   docker run --restart unless-stopped -v `pwd`:/data:z dock.mau.dev/maunium/meowlnir:<version>
   

   Additionally, you should either add Meowlnir to the same Docker network as Synapse with --network=synapsenet (when both are running in Docker), or expose the correct port with -p 29339:29339 (when the homeserver is outside Docker).
5. Follow the instructions on the Creating bots page to actually initialize your bot, then the Configuring bots page to tell the bot what to do.

Upgrading

1. Pull the new version (setup step 1)
2. Start the new version (setup step 6)

Docker compose

0. Create a directory for Meowlnir like step #0 in the Docker CLI instructions above.
1. Create docker-compose.yml that contains something like this:

   version: "3.7"
   
   services:
     meowlnir:
       container_name: meowlnir
       image: dock.mau.dev/maunium/meowlnir:<version>
       restart: unless-stopped
       volumes:
       - .:/data
   
       # If you put the service above in the same docker-compose as the homeserver,
       # ignore the parts below. Otherwise, see below for configuring networking.
   
       # If synapse is running outside of docker, you'll need to expose the port.
       # Note that in most cases you should either run everything inside docker
       # or everything outside docker, rather than mixing docker things with
       # non-docker things.
       #ports:
       #- "29339:29339"
       # You'll also probably want this so Meowlnir can reach Synapse directly
       # using something like `http://host.docker.internal:8008` as the address:
       #extra_hosts:
       #- "host.docker.internal:host-gateway"
   
       # If synapse is in a different network, then add this container to that network.
       #networks:
       #- synapsenet
   # This is also a part of the networks thing above
   #networks:
   #  synapsenet:
   #    external:
   #      name: synapsenet
   
   

2. Follow the rest of the Docker setup, but use compose commands instead of the raw docker commands: docker-compose up -d to start, docker-compose stop to stop and docker-compose pull to update.

If you want to set it up in an existing docker-compose file instead of a new dedicated one, simply adjust the volumes section to mount a subdirectory instead of the current directory as the data directory:

volumes:
- ./meowlnir:/data

When you put Meowlnir and Synapse in the same docker-compose file, networking should work out of the box, which means you don't need any of the commented ports or networks things in the example compose file.