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Docker Compose installation

This installation method is for test-setups and small-scale production setups.

Requirements​

  • A host with at least 2 CPU cores and 2 GB of RAM
  • Docker
  • Docker Compose (Compose v2 is recommended, see here for instructions on how to upgrade)

Video​

Preparation​

To download the latest docker-compose.yml open your terminal and navigate to the directory of your choice. Run the following command:

wget https://goauthentik.io/docker-compose.yml

If this is a fresh authentik installation, you need to generate a password and a secret key. If you don't already have a password generator installed, you can run this command to install pwgen, a popular generator:

# You can also use openssl instead: `openssl rand -base64 36`
sudo apt-get install -y pwgen

Next, run the following commands to generate a password and secret key and write them to your .env file:

echo "PG_PASS=$(pwgen -s 40 1)" >> .env
echo "AUTHENTIK_SECRET_KEY=$(pwgen -s 50 1)" >> .env
# Because of a PostgreSQL limitation, only passwords up to 99 chars are supported
# See https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/09512C4F-8CB9-4021-B455-EF4C4F0D55A0@amazon.com

To enable error reporting, run the following command:

echo "AUTHENTIK_ERROR_REPORTING__ENABLED=true" >> .env

It is also recommended to configure global email credentials. These are used by authentik to notify you about alerts and configuration issues. They can also be used by Email stages to send verification/recovery emails.

To configure email credentials, append this block to your .env file

# SMTP Host Emails are sent to
AUTHENTIK_EMAIL__HOST=localhost
AUTHENTIK_EMAIL__PORT=25
# Optionally authenticate (don't add quotation marks to your password)
AUTHENTIK_EMAIL__USERNAME=
AUTHENTIK_EMAIL__PASSWORD=
# Use StartTLS
AUTHENTIK_EMAIL__USE_TLS=false
# Use SSL
AUTHENTIK_EMAIL__USE_SSL=false
AUTHENTIK_EMAIL__TIMEOUT=10
# Email address authentik will send from, should have a correct @domain
AUTHENTIK_EMAIL__FROM=authentik@localhost

Configure for port 80/443​

By default, authentik listens internally on port 9000 for HTTP and 9443 for HTTPS. To change the exposed ports to 80 and 443, you can set the following variables in .env:

COMPOSE_PORT_HTTP=80
COMPOSE_PORT_HTTPS=443

See Configuration to change the internal ports. Be sure to run docker compose up -d to rebuild with the new port numbers.

Startup​

warning

The server assumes to have local timezone as UTC. All internals are handled in UTC; whenever a time is displayed to the user in UI, the time shown is localized. Do not update or mount /etc/timezone or /etc/localtime in the authentik containers. This will not give any advantages. It will cause problems with OAuth and SAML authentication, e.g. see this GitHub issue.

Afterwards, run these commands to finish:

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

The docker-compose.yml file statically references the latest version available at the time of downloading the compose file. Each time you upgrade to a newer version of authentik, you download a new docker-compose.yml file, which points to the latest available version. For more information, refer to the Upgrading section in the Release Notes.

To start the initial setup, navigate to http://<your server's IP or hostname>:9000/if/flow/initial-setup/.

There you are prompted to set a password for the akadmin user (the default user).

An explanation about what each service in the docker compose file does, see Architecture.