How to install inside LXC container (Alpine Linux)

How to install grocy on Alpine Linux (running inside LXC container

Alpine is a minimalistic Linux distributions often being containerized inside Docker or LXC. The guide assumes you’re following the steps below a fresh Alpine Linux installation, all commands are to be run under root user. The whole LXC container takes less than 200 MB.

grocy is configured to be served on HTTP (port 80) and hence only LAN (where everyone is trusted) is assumed.

Parts of these instructions are taken from Alpine Wiki (https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Nginx).

Pull latest packages

apk update
apk upgrade

Install dependencies (nginx + php + php sqlite)

apk add php nginx php7-sqlite3 php7-fpm php7-pdo_sqlite php7-gd php7-fileinfo php7-tokenizer composer php7-ctype

Create a dedicated user/group for nginx

adduser -D -g 'www' www

Configure nginx

cat > /etc/nginx/nginx.conf <<HERE
user                            www;
worker_processes                auto; # it will be determinate automatically by the number of cores

error_log                       /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;

events {
    worker_connections          1024;
}

http {
    include                     /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type                application/octet-stream;
    sendfile                    on;
    access_log                  /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    keepalive_timeout           3000;
    server {
        listen                  80;
        root                    /www/public;
        index                   index.html index.htm index.php;
        try_files               \$uri /index.php;
        server_name             localhost;
        client_max_body_size    32m;
        error_page              500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
              root              /var/lib/nginx/html;
        }
        location ~ \.php\$ {
              fastcgi_pass      127.0.0.1:9000;
              fastcgi_index     index.php;
              include           fastcgi.conf;
        }
    }
}
HERE

Create webroot

mkdir /www
chown -R www:www /var/lib/nginx
chown www:www /var/tmp/nginx

Configure php

PHP_FPM_USER="www"
PHP_FPM_GROUP="www"
PHP_FPM_LISTEN_MODE="0660"
PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT="512M"
PHP_MAX_UPLOAD="50M"
PHP_MAX_FILE_UPLOAD="200"
PHP_MAX_POST="100M"
PHP_DISPLAY_ERRORS="On"
PHP_DISPLAY_STARTUP_ERRORS="On"
PHP_ERROR_REPORTING="E_COMPILE_ERROR\|E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR\|E_ERROR\|E_CORE_ERROR"
PHP_CGI_FIX_PATHINFO=0
sed -i "s|;listen.owner\s*=\s*nobody|listen.owner = ${PHP_FPM_USER}|g" /etc/php7/php-fpm.d/www.conf
sed -i "s|;listen.group\s*=\s*nobody|listen.group = ${PHP_FPM_GROUP}|g" /etc/php7/php-fpm.d/www.conf
sed -i "s|;listen.mode\s*=\s*0660|listen.mode = ${PHP_FPM_LISTEN_MODE}|g" /etc/php7/php-fpm.d/www.conf
sed -i "s|user\s*=\s*nobody|user = ${PHP_FPM_USER}|g" /etc/php7/php-fpm.d/www.conf
sed -i "s|group\s*=\s*nobody|group = ${PHP_FPM_GROUP}|g" /etc/php7/php-fpm.d/www.conf
sed -i "s|;log_level\s*=\s*notice|log_level = notice|g" /etc/php7/php-fpm.d/www.conf
sed -i "s|display_errors\s*=\s*Off|display_errors = ${PHP_DISPLAY_ERRORS}|i" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|display_startup_errors\s*=\s*Off|display_startup_errors = ${PHP_DISPLAY_STARTUP_ERRORS}|i" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|error_reporting\s*=\s*E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_STRICT|error_reporting = ${PHP_ERROR_REPORTING}|i" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;*memory_limit =.*|memory_limit = ${PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT}|i" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;*upload_max_filesize =.*|upload_max_filesize = ${PHP_MAX_UPLOAD}|i" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;*max_file_uploads =.*|max_file_uploads = ${PHP_MAX_FILE_UPLOAD}|i" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;*post_max_size =.*|post_max_size = ${PHP_MAX_POST}|i" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;*cgi.fix_pathinfo=.*|cgi.fix_pathinfo= ${PHP_CGI_FIX_PATHINFO}|i" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;extension=fileinfo|extension=fileinfo|" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;extension=gd2|extension=gd2|" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;extension=pdo_sqlite|extension=pdo_sqlite|" /etc/php7/php.ini
sed -i "s|;extension=sqlite3|extension=sqlite3|" /etc/php7/php.ini

Get and extract grocy to webroot

# Adjust `ver` to (preferrably) the latest version found at https://github.com/grocy/grocy/releases
cd /www
pkgver=2.5.2
wget https://github.com/grocy/grocy/releases/download/v${pkgver}/grocy_${pkgver}.zip

unzip grocy_${pkgver}.zip
rm grocy_${pkgver}.zip

Adjust grocy configuration, set correct permissions

cp config-dist.php data/config.php
# edit data/config.php (language, menu items, currency, etc)
chown -R www:www /www

Start php-fpm and enable it after boot

rc-service php-fpm7 start
rc-update add php-fpm7 default

Start nginx and enable it after boot

rc-service nginx start
rc-update add nginx default

test access to grocy in your browser
reboot server to check whether services are correctly started

Setup a regular backup of config.php, /www/data/grocy.db and /www/data/storage

tar cvzf /www/backup.tgz /www/data/config.php /www/data/grocy.db /www/data/storage
cp /www/backup.tgz SOME_PLACE_SAFE
# where SOME_PLACE_SAFE is probably a mount from a remote system

Troubleshooting

Check logs

tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.log
tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.log
tail -f /var/log/php7/error.log

[emk2203]

I also got my instructions in #201 to work, but only under webroot. I am going to update my instructions accordingly. Thanks again, it was a big help to see that yours worked!

[KrumbEMT]

I’m having an issue installing following this guide with 3.3.2. I realize it’s related to PHP 8 being required after Grocy v3.1, but I can’t figure out the commands to make it play nice. Could it be updated for v3+ ?