This is a sample configuration for running Healthchecks with Docker and Docker Compose.

Note: For the sake of simplicity, the sample configuration starts a single database node and a single web server node, both on the same host. It does not handle TLS termination.

• Copy /docker/.env.example to /docker/.env and add your configuration in it. As a minimum, set the following fields:

  • DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL – the "From:" address for outbound emails
  • EMAIL_HOST – the SMTP server
  • EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD – the SMTP password
  • EMAIL_HOST_USER – the SMTP username
  • SECRET_KEY – secures HTTP sessions, set to a random value

• Create and start containers:

    $ docker-compose up
  

• Create a superuser:

    $ docker-compose run web /opt/healthchecks/manage.py createsuperuser
  

• Open https://localhost:8000 in your browser and log in with the credentials from the previous step.

The reference Dockerfile uses uWSGI as the WSGI server. You can configure uWSGI by setting UWSGI_... environment variables in docker/.env. For example, to disable HTTP request logging, set:

UWSGI_DISABLE_LOGGING=1

Read more about configuring uWSGI in uWSGI documentation.

If you plan to expose your Healthchecks instance to the public internet, make sure you put a TLS-terminating reverse proxy in front of it.

Important: This Dockerfile uses UWSGI, which relies on the X-Forwarded-Proto header to determine if a request is secure or not. Make sure your TLS-terminating reverse proxy:

• Discards the X-Forwarded-Proto header sent by the end user.
• Sets the X-Forwarded-Proto header value to match the protocol of the original request ("http" or "https").

For example, in NGINX you can use the $scheme variable like so:

proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;