Deploying a Joplin Server using Podman and Quadlet

Dependencies:

• Podman v5.0 or higher (Quadlet with pod support 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.
• .pod: Starting with podman v5.0, used to manage pods by running podman pod

For the Joplin Server we provide .pod, .container, 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/strzinek/joplin-pod.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