bitnami/ghost repository overview

⁠Bitnami Secure Image for Ghost

⁠What is Ghost?

Overview of Ghost⁠ Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

⁠TL;DR

docker run --name ghost bitnami/ghost:latest

Warning: This quick setup is only intended for development environments. You are encouraged to change the insecure default credentials and check out the available configuration options in the Environment Variables⁠ section for a more secure d eployment.

⁠Why use Bitnami Secure Images?

Those are hardened, minimal CVE images built and maintained by Bitnami. Bitnami Secure Images are based on the cloud-optimized, security-hardened enterprise OS Photon Linux⁠. Why choose BSI images?

• Hardened secure images of popular open source software with Near-Zero Vulnerabilities
• Vulnerability Triage & Prioritization with VEX Statements, KEV and EPSS Scores
• Compliance focus with FIPS, STIG, and air-gap options, including secure bill of materials (SBOM)
• Software supply chain provenance attestation through in-toto
• First class support for the internet’s favorite Helm charts

Each image comes with valuable security metadata. You can view the metadata in our public catalog here⁠. Note: Some data is only available with commercial subscriptions to BSI⁠.

If you are looking for our previous generation of images based on Debian Linux, please see the Bitnami Legacy registry⁠.

⁠How to deploy Ghost in Kubernetes?

Deploying Bitnami applications as Helm Charts is the easiest way to get started with our applications on Kubernetes. Read more about the installation in the Bitnami Ghost Chart GitHub repository⁠.

⁠Why use a non-root container?

Non-root container images add an extra layer of security and are generally recommended for production environments. However, because they run as a non-root user, privileged tasks are typically off-limits. Learn more about non-root containers in our docs⁠.

⁠Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

Learn more about the Bitnami tagging policy and the difference between rolling tags and immutable tags in our documentation page⁠.

You can see the equivalence between the different tags by taking a look at the tags-info.yaml file present in the branch folder, i.e bitnami/ASSET/BRANCH/DISTRO/tags-info.yaml.

Subscribe to project updates by watching the bitnami/containers GitHub repo⁠.

⁠Get this image

The recommended way to get the Bitnami Ghost Docker Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry⁠.

docker pull bitnami/ghost:latest

To use a specific version, you can pull a versioned tag. You can view the list of available versions⁠ in the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull bitnami/ghost:[TAG]

If you wish, you can also build the image yourself by cloning the repository, changing to the directory containing the Dockerfile and executing the docker build command. Remember to replace the APP, VERSION and OPERATING-SYSTEM path placeholders in the example command below with the correct values.

git clone https://github.com/bitnami/containers.git
cd bitnami/APP/VERSION/OPERATING-SYSTEM
docker build -t bitnami/APP:latest .

⁠How to use this image

Ghost requires access to a MySQL or MariaDB database to store information. We'll use the Bitnami Docker Image for MySQL⁠ for the database requirements.

⁠Using the Docker Command Line

⁠Step 1: Create a network

docker network create ghost-network

⁠Step 2: Create a volume for MySQL persistence and create a MySQL container

$ docker volume create --name mysql_data
docker run -d --name mysql \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env MYSQL_USER=bn_ghost \
  --env MYSQL_PASSWORD=bitnami \
  --env MYSQL_DATABASE=bitnami_ghost \
  --network ghost-network \
  --volume mysql_data:/bitnami/mysql \
  bitnami/mysql:latest

⁠Step 3: Create volumes for Ghost persistence and launch the container

$ docker volume create --name ghost_data
docker run -d --name ghost \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env GHOST_DATABASE_USER=bn_ghost \
  --env GHOST_DATABASE_PASSWORD=bitnami \
  --env GHOST_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_ghost \
  --network ghost-network \
  --volume ghost_data:/bitnami/ghost \
  bitnami/ghost:latest

Access your application at http://your-ip/

⁠Run the application using Docker Compose

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitnami/containers/main/bitnami/ghost/docker-compose.yml > docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up -d

Please be aware this file has not undergone internal testing. Consequently, we advise its use exclusively for development or testing purposes. For production-ready deployments, we highly recommend utilizing its associated Bitnami Helm chart⁠.

If you detect any issue in the docker-compose.yaml file, feel free to report it or contribute with a fix by following our Contributing Guidelines⁠.

⁠Persisting your application

If you remove the container all your data will be lost, and the next time you run the image the database will be reinitialized. To avoid this loss of data, you should mount a volume that will persist even after the container is removed.

For persistence you should mount a directory at the /bitnami/ghost path. If the mounted directory is empty, it will be initialized on the first run. Additionally you should mount a volume for persistence of the MySQL data⁠.

The above examples define the Docker volumes named mysql_data and ghost_data. The Ghost application state will persist as long as volumes are not removed.

To avoid inadvertent removal of volumes, you can mount host directories as data volumes⁠. Alternatively you can make use of volume plugins to host the volume data.

⁠Mount host directories as data volumes with Docker Compose

This requires a minor change to the docker-compose.yml⁠ file present in this repository:

   mysql:
     ...
     volumes:
-      - mysql_data:/bitnami/mysql
+      - /path/to/mysql-persistence:/bitnami/mysql
   ...
   ghost:
     ...
     volumes:
-      - ghost_data:/bitnami/ghost
+      - /path/to/ghost-persistence:/bitnami/ghost
   ...
-volumes:
-  mysql_data:
-    driver: local
-  ghost_data:
-    driver: local

⁠Mount host directories as data volumes using the Docker command line

⁠Step 1: Create a network (if it does not exist)

docker network create ghost-network

⁠Step 2. Create a MySQL container with host volume

docker run -d --name mysql \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env MYSQL_USER=bn_ghost \
  --env MYSQL_PASSWORD=bitnami \
  --env MYSQL_DATABASE=bitnami_ghost \
  --network ghost-network \
  --volume /path/to/mysql-persistence:/bitnami/mysql \
  bitnami/mysql:latest

⁠Step 3. Create the Ghost container with host volumes

docker run -d --name ghost \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env GHOST_DATABASE_USER=bn_ghost \
  --env GHOST_DATABASE_PASSWORD=bitnami \
  --env GHOST_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_ghost \
  --network ghost-network \
  --volume /path/to/ghost-persistence:/bitnami/ghost \
  bitnami/ghost:latest

⁠Configuration

⁠Environment variables

⁠Customizable environment variables

⁠Read-only environment variables

When you start the Ghost image, you can adjust the configuration of the instance by passing one or more environment variables either on the docker-compose file or on the docker run command line. If you want to add a new environment variable:

• For docker-compose add the variable name and value under the application section in the docker-compose.yml⁠ file present in this repository:

  ghost:
    ...
    environment:
      - GHOST_PASSWORD=my_password
    ...
  

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• For manual execution add a --env option with each variable and value:

  $ docker run -d --name ghost -p 80:8080 -p 443:8443 \
    --env GHOST_PASSWORD=my_password \
    --network ghost-tier \
    --volume /path/to/ghost-persistence:/bitnami/ghost \
    bitnami/ghost:latest
  

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⁠Examples

⁠SMTP configuration using a Gmail account

This would be an example of SMTP configuration using a Gmail account:

• Modify the docker-compose.yml⁠ file present in this repository:

    ghost:
      ...
      environment:
        - GHOST_DATABASE_USER=bn_ghost
        - GHOST_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_ghost
        - ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes
        - GHOST_SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
        - GHOST_SMTP_PORT=587
        - [email protected]
        - GHOST_SMTP_PASSWORD=your_password
        - [email protected]
    ...
  

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• For manual execution:

  $ docker run -d --name ghost -p 80:8080 -p 443:8443 \
    --env GHOST_DATABASE_USER=bn_ghost \
    --env GHOST_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_ghost \
    --env GHOST_SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com \
    --env GHOST_SMTP_PORT=587 \
    --env [email protected] \
    --env GHOST_SMTP_PASSWORD=your_password \
    --env [email protected] \
    --network ghost-tier \
    --volume /path/to/ghost-persistence:/bitnami \
    bitnami/ghost:latest
  

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⁠Connect Ghost container to an existing database

The Bitnami Ghost container supports connecting the Ghost application to an external database. This would be an example of using an external database for Ghost.

• Modify the docker-compose.yml⁠ file present in this repository:

     ghost:
       ...
       environment:
  -      - GHOST_DATABASE_HOST=mysql
  +      - GHOST_DATABASE_HOST=mysql_host
         - GHOST_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER=3306
         - GHOST_DATABASE_NAME=ghost_db
         - GHOST_DATABASE_USER=ghost_user
  -      - ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes
  +      - GHOST_DATABASE_PASSWORD=ghost_password
       ...
  

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• For manual execution:

  $ docker run -d --name ghost\
    -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 \
    --network ghost-network \
    --env GHOST_DATABASE_HOST=mysql_host \
    --env GHOST_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER=3306 \
    --env GHOST_DATABASE_NAME=ghost_db \
    --env GHOST_DATABASE_USER=ghost_user \
    --env GHOST_DATABASE_PASSWORD=ghost_password \
    --volume ghost_data:/bitnami/ghost \
    bitnami/ghost:latest
  

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In case the database already contains data from a previous Ghost installation, you need to set the variable GHOST_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP to yes. Otherwise, the container would execute the installation wizard and could modify the existing data in the database. Note that, when setting GHOST_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP to yes, values for environment variables such as GHOST_USERNAME, GHOST_PASSWORD or GHOST_EMAIL will be ignored.

⁠FIPS configuration in Bitnami Secure Images

The Bitnami Ghost Docker image from the Bitnami Secure Images⁠ catalog includes extra features and settings to configure the container with FIPS capabilities. You can configure the next environment variables:

• OPENSSL_FIPS: whether OpenSSL runs in FIPS mode or not. yes (default), no.

⁠Logging

The Bitnami Ghost Docker image sends the container logs to stdout. To view the logs:

docker logs ghost

Or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose logs ghost

You can configure the containers logging driver⁠ using the --log-driver option if you wish to consume the container logs differently. In the default configuration docker uses the json-file driver.

⁠Maintenance

⁠Backing up your container

To backup your data, configuration and logs, follow these simple steps:

⁠Step 1: Stop the currently running container

docker stop ghost

Or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose stop ghost

⁠Step 2: Run the backup command

We need to mount two volumes in a container we will use to create the backup: a directory on your host to store the backup in, and the volumes from the container we just stopped so we can access the data.

docker run --rm -v /path/to/ghost-backups:/backups --volumes-from ghost busybox \
  cp -a /bitnami/ghost /backups/latest

⁠Restoring a backup

Restoring a backup is as simple as mounting the backup as volumes in the containers.

For the MySQL database container:

 $ docker run -d --name mysql \
   ...
-  --volume /path/to/mysql-persistence:/bitnami/mysql \
+  --volume /path/to/mysql-backups/latest:/bitnami/mysql \
   bitnami/mysql:latest

For the Ghost container:

 $ docker run -d --name ghost \
   ...
-  --volume /path/to/ghost-persistence:/bitnami/ghost \
+  --volume /path/to/ghost-backups/latest:/bitnami/ghost \
   bitnami/ghost:latest

⁠Upgrade this image

Bitnami provides up-to-date versions of MySQL and Ghost, including security patches, soon after they are made upstream. We recommend that you follow these steps to upgrade your container. We will cover here the upgrade of the Ghost container. For the MySQL upgrade see: https://github.com/bitnami/containers/blob/main/bitnami/mysql/README.md#upgrade-this-image⁠

The bitnami/ghost:latest tag always points to the most recent release. To get the most recent release you can simple repull the latest tag from the Docker Hub with docker pull bitnami/ghost:latest. However it is recommended to use tagged versions⁠.

⁠Step 1: Get the updated image

docker pull bitnami/ghost:latest

⁠Step 2: Stop the running container

Stop the currently running container using the command

docker-compose stop ghost

⁠Step 3: Take a snapshot of the application state

Follow the steps in Backing up your container⁠ to take a snapshot of the current application state.

⁠Step 4: Remove the currently running container

Remove the currently running container by executing the following command:

docker-compose rm -v ghost

⁠Step 5: Run the new image

Update the image tag in docker-compose.yml and re-create your container with the new image:

docker-compose up -d

⁠Customize this image

The Bitnami Ghost Docker image is designed to be extended so it can be used as the base image for your custom web applications.

⁠Extend this image

To do so, create your own image using a Dockerfile with the format below:

FROM bitnami/ghost
## Put your customizations below
...

This example shows how to install the Storage Adapter for S3⁠.

FROM bitnami/ghost:latest

## Change user to perform privileged actions
USER root

COPY post_ghost_config.sh /
RUN mkdir -p /.npm \
    && chmod -R g+rwX,o+rw /.npm \
    && chmod +x /post_ghost_config.sh \
    && cp /opt/bitnami/scripts/ghost/entrypoint.sh /tmp/entrypoint.sh \
    && sed '/info "\*\* Ghost setup finished! \*\*"/ a . /post_ghost_config.sh' /tmp/entrypoint.sh > /opt/bitnami/scripts/ghost/entrypoint.sh
ENV AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID" \
    AWS_ACCESS_SECRET_KEY="AWS_ACCESS_SECRET_KEY" \
    AWS_REGION="AWS_REGION" \
    AWS_BUCKET="AWS_BUCKET"

## Revert to the original non-root user
USER 1001

RUN cd /bitnami/ghost \
    && npm i --silent ghost-storage-adapter-s3 \
    && mkdir -p /opt/bitnami/ghost/content/adapters/storage/s3 \
    && cp -r ./node_modules/ghost-storage-adapter-s3/* /opt/bitnami/ghost/content/adapters/storage/s3/

1. Prepare npm and install an adapter.
2. Add configuration for the adapter.

⁠Create a script named post_ghost_config.sh using jq for adding configuration to the `config.production.js

Note: the README for this container is longer than the DockerHub length limit of 25000, so it has been trimmed. The full README can be found at https://github.com/bitnami/containers/blob/main/bitnami/ghost/README.md⁠