Docker Install#

If you are doing a Docker install, you can choose where you would like to place your configuration files. You must also have docker installed.

Throughout the tutorials here, you will find yourself running many docker run commands. When you finally are ready to configure SolarThing, you will end up writing a docker-compose.yml file.

Testing `docker run`#

To make sure you are ready for future steps in the tutorial, run this command:

docker run --rm ghcr.io/wildmountainfarms/solarthing version

You should get output similar to:

pi@solarpi:~$ docker run --rm ghcr.io/wildmountainfarms/solarthing version
SolarThing made by Lavender Shannon
Jar: solarthing.jar
Jar last modified: 2023-07-02T18:21:48Z
Java version: 19.0.2

Creating your configuration directory#

To make sure you can configure SolarThing easily, you should determine what directory you would like to use to contain your configuration. You may choose to put SolarThing config in a place such as ~/Documents/containers/solarthing or even in a place like /opt/containers/solarthing. It is recommend to put SolarThing configuration somewhere in your home directory so that your user has permission to edit the configuration without sudo.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will choose ~/Documents/containers/solarthing. We will now create a docker-compose.yml file so that when we configure SolarThing in future steps we can easily run and test it.

Note

In this example we are creating a subfolder of solarthing called main. This main folder should house the all of the files for a given SolarThing instance. If you would like, you can use a name other than main such as rover or mate, as long as it makes sense to you and the program you plan to run.

Here is an example file structure:

~/Documents/containers/solarthing/
├── main/
│   └── config/
│       └── base.json
└── docker-compose.yml

Let’s make the file structure!

mkdir -p ~/Documents/containers/solarthing/main/{config,logs}
cd ~/Documents/containers/solarthing/
nano docker-compose.yml

At this point you should be editing docker-compose.yml. Place this inside your file:

version: '3.7'

services:
  main:
    image: 'ghcr.io/wildmountainfarms/solarthing:latest'
    container_name: solarthing-main
    restart: 'unless-stopped'
    command: run --base config/base.json
#    group_add: # this is only necessary if you are using a user other than root
#      - dialout
#    cap_add:
#      - SYS_RAWIO
#    devices:
#      - '/dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0'
    volumes:
      - './main/config:/app/config:ro'
      - './main/logs:/app/logs'

Note

When running this, SolarThing will write logs files to the log directory using root:root permission (unless you change the user running SolarThing or do not mount the logs directory).

Now run sudo docker compose up. The program should crash with output similar to this:

main  | 2023-07-12 04:32:40.939 [main] INFO  me.retrodaredevil.solarthing.program.SolarMain - [LOG] Beginning main. Jar: Jar: solarthing.jar Last Modified: 2023-07-12T04:29:54Z Java version: 19.0.2
main  | [stdout] Beginning main. Jar: Jar: solarthing.jar Last Modified: 2023-07-12T04:29:54Z Java version: 19.0.2
main  | [stderr] Beginning main. Jar: Jar: solarthing.jar Last Modified: 2023-07-12T04:29:54Z Java version: 19.0.2
main  | 2023-07-12 04:32:40.990 [main] INFO  me.retrodaredevil.solarthing.program.SolarMain - Using base configuration file: config/base.json
main  | 2023-07-12 04:32:40.990 [main] ERROR me.retrodaredevil.solarthing.program.SolarMain - (Fatal)Base configuration file does not exist!
main exited with code 0

Now you are ready to continue! Head over to Serial Port Setup.

Docker Install#

Testing docker run#

Creating your configuration directory#

Testing `docker run`#