Deploying a Joplin Server using Podman and Quadlet

Dependencies:

• Podman v4.4 or higher (Quadlet is included as of this version)
• Nginx

Installation:

Quadlet supports these unit file types:

• .container: Used to manage containers by running podman run
• .kube: Used to manage containers defined in Kubernetes YAML files by running podman kube play
• .network: Used to create Podman networks that may be referenced in .container or .kube files
• .volume: Used to create Podman volumes that may be referenced in .container files.

For the Joplin Server we only provide .container, .network and .volume files. Everything you need is under the systemd/ directory.

Setup VM

Choose your preferred VM provider - whether you prefer Linode, Digital Ocean, AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.

CLI Commands

Make sure you run Podman in rootless (this guide assumes you're running in this mode). There's a Makefile file to avoid mistakes since copy and pasting commands is error prone.

Set up the environment.

sudo apt install nginx certbot python3-certbot-nginx -y

git clone https://github.com/danvergara/joplin.git

cd joplin

Copy the files to $(HOME)/.config/containers/systemd

make cp-systemd

Force the generator by calling:

make reload

Start the service by calling:

make start

Note: If something goes wrong, systemd may not be able to tell you what is wrong with your unit file. You can use /usr/libexec/podman/quadlet --dryrun to see if there is an issue in the unit file.

make quadlet-dry-run

Configure Nginx as a Reverse Proxy

Copy the content of the provided Nginx configuration file to the server configuration file.

cp joplin-server.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/joplin-server.conf

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  server_name <subdomain.domain.com>;

  error_log /var/log/nginx/joplin-server.error;

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:22300;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  }
}

Don't forget to add your domain.

Verify the syntax and test Nginx for configuration errors.

sudo nginx -t

Restart Nginx to load changes.

sudo service nginx restart

Configure HTTPS Access

Request SSL cert from letsencrypt/certbot

sudo certbot --nginx -d subdomain.mydomain.com