Hi guys! I'm going at my first docker attempt...and I'm going in Proxmox. I created an LXC container, from which I installed docker, and portainer. Portainer seems happy to work, and shows its admin page on port 9443 correctly. I tried next running the image of immich, following the steps detailed in their own guide. This...doesn't seem to open the admin website on port 2283. But then again, it seems to run in its own docker internal network (172.16.0.x). How should I reach immich admin page from another computer in the same network? I'm new to Docker, so I'm not sure how are images supposed to communicate within the normal computer network...Thanks!
Wait, you're running docker inside lxc? I would not do that. I would create a full VM and run docker in there. Or, if that's all you're running, skip proxmox and install Debian or whatever on bare metal, and docker on that.
Sure...But proxmox is already there. It's installed and it runs 5VMs and about 10 containers.
...I'm not going to dump all that just because I need docker...and I'm not getting another machine if I can get use that. So...sure, there might be overhead, but I saw some other people doing it, and the other alternative I saw was running docker on a VM...which is even more overhead. And I fear running it on the proxmox server bare metal, it might conflict with how it manages the LXC containers.
Docker inside LXC adds not only the overhead they’d individually add — probably not significant enough for it to matter in a homelab setting — but with it also the added layer of complexity that you’re going to hit when it comes to debugging anything. You’re much better off dropping docker in a full fledged VM instead of running it inside LXC. With a full VM, if nothing else, you can allow the virtual networking to be treated as it’s own separate device on your network, which should reduce a layer of complexity in the problem you’re trying to solve.
As for your original problem… it sounds like you’re not exposing the docker container layer’s network to your host. Without knowing exactly how you’re launching them (beyond the quirky docker inside LXC setup), it is hard to say where the issue may be. If you’re using compose, try setting the network to external, or bridge, and see if you can expose the service’s port that way. Once you’ve got the port exposure thing figured out, you’re probably better off unexposing the service, setup a proper reverse proxy, and wiring the service to go through your reverse proxy instead.
Add a new VM, install docker-ce on it and slowly migrate all the other containers/vm‘s to docker. End result is way less overhead, way less complexity and way better sleep.
Jim’s Garage on YT, he recently did a video about running Docker in an LXC. I think you’ll find the info you need there. It can be done, but if you’re new to Docker and/or LXCs, it adds an additional layer of complexity you will have to deal with for every container/stack you deploy.
I did it that way for years. It's not worth the hassle my man. I did the same, told people that it'd be fine, that it was more performant and so it was worth it. But then the problems, oh lord the problems. Every proxmox update brought hours or days of work trying to figure how how it broke this time. Docker updates would make it completely bork. Random freezes, permission errors galore. I threw in the towel on it, figuring I was hacking it making it work anyway.
Now I do vms on proxmox. Specifically I swapped to k3s which is a whole other thing, but docker in vms runs fine for how much less annoyance there is. Selfhosting became a lot less stressful.
I have Immich working fine inside an LXC with docker, You just gotta make sure that Keyctl and Nesting are activated in the LXC container's options in Proxmox and make sure to use the Immich recommended docker-compose file.
If you still have problems try to take a look at the containers logs with the "docker logs" command to see if there's an error message somewhere.
Thanks! When I type my LXC's IP:2283, I get unable to connect. I checked the docker-compose.yml and the port seems to be 2283:3001, but no luck at either. Is there anything that needs to be done on docker's network in order to..."publish" a container to the local network so it can be seen? Or any docker running with a port can be reached via the host's IP with no further config? Checking the portainer's networks section, I can see an 'immich-default' network using bridge on 172.18.0.0/16, while the system's bridge seems to be running at 172.17.0.0/16. Is this the correct defaults? Should I change anything?
That all seems correct, the way to expose services with a docker-compose is by using the:
ports:
- 2283:3001
That means that you expose whatever is at port 3001 in the cointainer (in this case the Immich server inside the docker container, which is exposed by default to 3001) to port 2283 of the host machine (in this case, your LXC container). So it should work if everything else is set up correctly.
The 172.x.x.x networks are normal internal networks for docker to use, normally you needn't care about them because you just expose whichever port you need via the ports command above.
Are you following this step by step to set it all up? is your .env file properly set up? did you check the containers logs?
I routinely run my homelab services as a single Docker inside an LXC - they are quicker, and it makes backups and moving them around trivial. However, while you're learning, a VM (with something conventional like Debian or Ubuntu) is probably advised - it's a more common experience so you'll get more helpful advice when you ask a question like this.
Without having a look at your container and how you configured it, if you have correctly mapped your ports and didn't change anything fancy and don't use a reverse proxy
Your container should be accessible on your host's IP mapped with you Immich docker port:
HostIP:2283
Edit: Also, don't run a docker container in... Another container (LXC).
Thanks! When I type my LXC's IP:2283, I get unable to connect. I checked the docker-compose.yml and the port seems to be 2283:3001, but no luck at either. Is there anything that needs to be done on docker's network in order to..."publish" a container to the local network so it can be seen? Or any docker running with a port can be reached via the host's IP with no further config? Checking the portainer's networks section, I can see an 'immich-default' network using bridge on 172.18.0.0/16, while the system's bridge seems to be running at 172.17.0.0/16. Is this the correct defaults? Should I change anything?