So I’ve been thinking about how to manage all my services in my servers (all two of them). So my Smart Home Server is only one big docker-compose.yaml file, so that’s easy as it is. But my external server has multiple docker-compose.yaml files.
So the problem comes to this: How do you update your docker images, how often, and should you automate this in someway?
In comes Watchtower!
So after poking at internet for a while, the first thing that comes is Watchtower (https://containrrr.dev/watchtower/). It’s a docker service, that updates your existing docker services. Sounds kind, fun when you say it like that, but that’s what it is!
But the problem with auto-updating images? What if something breaks? We get API breakage, or home assistant has a meltdown and then nothing works. It’s not something you want happening, in any situation.
But you do want them updates, since security and all that sounds good, right? But is it really worth it? I mean, I would like to say absolutely yes. Auto-updating so you could just forget everything, sounds really really nice. But with the possibility of services not working, not worth it, at least for now. Maybe later?
But we have notifications?
Yes, you can configure Watchtower to just send notifications; Via email, slack, telegram or other systems. But those are systems I don’t use (I use Signal). Well, email yes, but I don’t want to get emails about my services, sounds wrong.
All in one place
And you do have to have a place for all this, centrally managed. You don’t want to go look into different places, to see if something needs updating, everything should be in one place.
One option, would be to use Portainer, and Portainer Agent, to gather all my Nodes into one place and get notifications in there, update all of them remotely. But even with this, I have some weird problems. I think I like handling stuff manually.
Too messy for now
So everything is just too messy now. It either feels wrong, or there is the risk of shitting everything. So for now, I’m just manually updating my services, not like there’s many of them.
Maybe I’ll install watchtower at some point because, if something breaks? Well then I just need to fix it. Even if everything should work all the time, nothing ever does. And getting automatic updates does sound nice.
But for now, manually running docker compose commands. Works well enough and at least you see instantly if something breaks!