linuxserver/paperless-ng repository overview

The LinuxServer.io⁠ team brings you another container release featuring:

• regular and timely application updates
• easy user mappings (PGID, PUID)
• custom base image with s6 overlay
• weekly base OS updates with common layers across the entire LinuxServer.io ecosystem to minimise space usage, down time and bandwidth
• regular security updates

Find us at:

• Blog⁠ - all the things you can do with our containers including How-To guides, opinions and much more!
• Discord⁠ - realtime support / chat with the community and the team.
• Discourse⁠ - post on our community forum.
• Fleet⁠ - an online web interface which displays all of our maintained images.
• GitHub⁠ - view the source for all of our repositories.
• Open Collective⁠ - please consider helping us by either donating or contributing to our budget

⁠linuxserver/paperless-ng⁠

Paperless-ng⁠ is an application by Daniel Quinn and contributors that indexes your scanned documents and allows you to easily search for documents and store metadata alongside your documents."

⁠Supported Architectures

We utilise the docker manifest for multi-platform awareness. More information is available from docker here⁠ and our announcement here⁠.

Simply pulling lscr.io/linuxserver/paperless-ng:latest should retrieve the correct image for your arch, but you can also pull specific arch images via tags.

The architectures supported by this image are:

⁠Application Setup

Default login is admin:admin via the webui, accessible at http://SERVERIP:PORT⁠ More info at paperless-ng⁠. For convenience this container provides an alias to perform administration management commands. Available administration commands are documented upstream here⁠ and can be accessed with this container thus: docker exec -it <container_name> manage <command>. For example, docker exec -it paperless manage document_retagger -tT.

⁠Usage

Here are some example snippets to help you get started creating a container.

⁠docker-compose (recommended, click here for more info⁠)

---
version: "2.1"
services:
  paperless-ng:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/paperless-ng:latest
    container_name: paperless-ng
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=America/New_York
      - REDIS_URL= #optional
    volumes:
      - </path/to/appdata/config>:/config
      - </path/to/appdata/data>:/data
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    restart: unless-stopped

⁠docker cli (click here for more info⁠)

docker run -d \
  --name=paperless-ng \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=America/New_York \
  -e REDIS_URL= `#optional` \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -v </path/to/appdata/config>:/config \
  -v </path/to/appdata/data>:/data \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/paperless-ng:latest

⁠Parameters

Container images are configured using parameters passed at runtime (such as those above). These parameters are separated by a colon and indicate <external>:<internal> respectively. For example, -p 8080:80 would expose port 80 from inside the container to be accessible from the host's IP on port 8080 outside the container.

⁠Environment variables from files (Docker secrets)

You can set any environment variable from a file by using a special prepend FILE__.

As an example:

-e FILE__PASSWORD=/run/secrets/mysecretpassword

Will set the environment variable PASSWORD based on the contents of the /run/secrets/mysecretpassword file.

⁠Umask for running applications

For all of our images we provide the ability to override the default umask settings for services started within the containers using the optional -e UMASK=022 setting. Keep in mind umask is not chmod it subtracts from permissions based on it's value it does not add. Please read up here⁠ before asking for support.

⁠User / Group Identifiers

When using volumes (-v flags) permissions issues can arise between the host OS and the container, we avoid this issue by allowing you to specify the user PUID and group PGID.

Ensure any volume directories on the host are owned by the same user you specify and any permissions issues will vanish like magic.

In this instance PUID=1000 and PGID=1000, to find yours use id user as below:

  $ id username
    uid=1000(dockeruser) gid=1000(dockergroup) groups=1000(dockergroup)

⁠Docker Mods

We publish various Docker Mods⁠ to enable additional functionality within the containers. The list of Mods available for this image (if any) as well as universal mods that can be applied to any one of our images can be accessed via the dynamic badges above.

⁠Support Info

• Shell access whilst the container is running: docker exec -it paperless-ng /bin/bash
• To monitor the logs of the container in realtime: docker logs -f paperless-ng
• container version number
  • docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' paperless-ng
• image version number
  • docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' lscr.io/linuxserver/paperless-ng:latest

⁠Updating Info

Most of our images are static, versioned, and require an image update and container recreation to update the app inside. With some exceptions (ie. nextcloud, plex), we do not recommend or support updating apps inside the container. Please consult the Application Setup⁠ section above to see if it is recommended for the image.

Below are the instructions for updating containers:

⁠Via Docker Compose

• Update all images: docker-compose pull
  • or update a single image: docker-compose pull paperless-ng
• Let compose update all containers as necessary: docker-compose up -d
  • or update a single container: docker-compose up -d paperless-ng
• You can also remove the old dangling images: docker image prune

⁠Via Docker Run

• Update the image: docker pull lscr.io/linuxserver/paperless-ng:latest
• Stop the running container: docker stop paperless-ng
• Delete the container: docker rm paperless-ng
• Recreate a new container with the same docker run parameters as instructed above (if mapped correctly to a host folder, your /config folder and settings will be preserved)
• You can also remove the old dangling images: docker image prune

⁠Via Watchtower auto-updater (only use if you don't remember the original parameters)

• Pull the latest image at its tag and replace it with the same env variables in one run:

  docker run --rm \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  containrrr/watchtower \
  --run-once paperless-ng
  

  Copy

• You can also remove the old dangling images: docker image prune

Note: We do not endorse the use of Watchtower as a solution to automated updates of existing Docker containers. In fact we generally discourage automated updates. However, this is a useful tool for one-time manual updates of containers where you have forgotten the original parameters. In the long term, we highly recommend using Docker Compose⁠.

⁠Image Update Notifications - Diun (Docker Image Update Notifier)

• We recommend Diun⁠ for update notifications. Other tools that automatically update containers unattended are not recommended or supported.

⁠Building locally

If you want to make local modifications to these images for development purposes or just to customize the logic:

git clone https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-paperless-ng.git
cd docker-paperless-ng
docker build \
  --no-cache \
  --pull \
  -t lscr.io/linuxserver/paperless-ng:latest .

The ARM variants can be built on x86_64 hardware using multiarch/qemu-user-static

docker run --rm --privileged multiarch/qemu-user-static:register --reset

Once registered you can define the dockerfile to use with -f Dockerfile.aarch64.

⁠Versions

• 30.11.21: - Added in jbig2enc.
• 07.10.21: - Fixed variable that determins if we should run redis locally.
• 01.10.21: - Replaced uwsgi with gunicorn due to websocket issues.
• 24.07.21: - Fixed directory config files (sqlite db) is all stored.
• 23.07.21: - Fixed initial user creation.
• 10.07.21: - Initial Release.