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Installing with Docker

New in version 3.0.21.

Review Board ships official Docker images, helping you quickly get your infrastructure set up with minimal effort.

We’ve designed these images to be extensible. You can deploy your own extensions and customize your installation through environment variables on launch, by rebuilding our image with your own settings, or by creating a new Dockerfile built on top of ours.

Getting Started

We’ll walk you through the basics of setting up Review Board on Docker in two different ways:

  1. Launching the Review Board image by itself using docker run.

  2. Launching the image along with a database, web server, and memcached using docker-compose.

You’ll also see how you can customize the Docker image for your own needs.

Before You Begin

Plan Your Infrastructure

The Review Board Docker image requires all of the following:

  • A database server (Postgres, MySQL, or MariaDB)

  • A memcached server

  • A web server (such as Apache or Nginx) that can proxy to the Docker image’s Gunicorn server and serve static media files

  • A local file system path to store the Review Board site directory (which will contain the static media files to serve)

If using docker-compose with our sample configurations, this will be all be taken care of for you.

A dedicated web server is required!

The Review Board Docker instance will not serve up static media (CSS, JavaScript, or images). You will need a web server in front of it, such as Nginx (recommended) or Apache.

Choose a Version

Our Docker images are available in the following forms:

  • beanbag/reviewboard:latest – The latest stable release of Review Board.

  • beanbag/reviewboard:X.Y – The latest stable release in a major version series (e.g., 3.0, 4.0).

  • beanbag/reviewboard:X.Y.Z – A specific release of Review Board (e.g., 3.0.21, 4.0.4).

See our Docker repository for all available versions.

Warning

If you’re using multiple Review Board Docker containers, they must all use the exact same version. Plan your deployment accordingly.

Using Docker Run

First, make sure you’ve set up memcached and a database server. Create a new database and a user account that can write to it.

Then, to start a new container, run:

$ docker pull beanbag/reviewboard:X.Y.Z
$ docker run -P \
             --name <name> \
             -v <local_path>:/site \
             -e DOMAIN=<domain> \
             -e COMPANY=<company> \
             -e MEMCACHED_SERVER=<hostname>:11211 \
             -e DATABASE_TYPE=<mysql|postgresql> \
             -e DATABASE_SERVER=<hostname> \
             -e DATABASE_USERNAME=<username> \
             -e DATABASE_PASSWORD=<password> \
             -e DATABASE_NAME=<database_name> \
             beanbag/reviewboard:X.Y.Z

For example:

$ docker pull beanbag/reviewboard:4.0.4
$ docker run -P \
             --name <name> \
             -v /var/www/reviewboard:/site \
             -e DOMAIN=reviews.corp.example.com \
             -e COMPANY="My Company" \
             -e MEMCACHED_SERVER=db.corp.example.com:11211 \
             -e DATABASE_TYPE=postgresql \
             -e DATABASE_SERVER=db.corp.example.com \
             -e DATABASE_USERNAME=reviewboard \
             -e DATABASE_PASSWORD=reviewboard12345 \
             -e DATABASE_NAME=reviewboard \
             beanbag/reviewboard:4.0.4

Some of these settings aren’t required, but are recommended. We’ll cover all the configuration options below.

Your new Review Board server should start up, create a new site directory, and populate your database.

See the docker-run documentation for more information.

Serving Content

The server will be accessible over port 8080. You can change this by passing -p port:8080.

You’ll need another web server to forward traffic to that port, and to serve up the following URLs:

  • /static/ (pointing to the site directory’s htdocs/static/)

  • /media/ (pointing to the site directory’s htdocs/media/)

If using Nginx, your configuration may look like:

upstream reviewboard {
    server reviewboard-docker1.corp.example.com:8080;
}

server {
    server_name reviews.corp.example.com
    listen 80;

    root /var/www/reviewboard/htdocs;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://reviewboard;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_redirect off;
    }

    location /media/ {
        alias /var/www/reviewboard/htdocs/media/;
        add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
        expires max;

        location ~ \.(html|htm|shtml|php)$ {
            types {}
            default_type text/plain;
        }
    }

    location /static/ {
        alias /var/www/reviewboard/htdocs/static/;
        add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
        expires max;
    }
}

Using Docker Compose

docker-compose can help you define and launch all the services needed for your Review Board deployment.

We have sample docker-compose.yaml files and related configuration that you can download and launch:

# MySQL configuration
docker-compose -f docker-compose.mysql.yaml -p reviewboard_mysql up

# Postgres configuration
docker-compose -f docker-compose.postgres.yaml -p reviewboard_postgres up

You should make a copy of these and modify them for your needs. See the docker-compose documentation for more information.

Setting up Cron

New in version 4.0.4.

If your container needs to run tasks periodically (such as search indexing), you’ll need to enable cron support.

This can be enabled by passing a REVIEWBOARD_CRONTAB environment variable when launching a container. This should be set to the location of a crontab file.

By default, the image ships with a /site/conf/cron.conf file, which will enable search indexing and user session cleanup. To activate this, you would pass:

REVIEWBOARD_CRONTAB=/site/conf/cron.conf

For instance, in docker-compose.yaml:

reviewboard:
    environment:
        - REVIEWBOARD_CRONTAB=/site/conf/cron.conf

If you provide your own crontab file (such as through a custom image or a bind mount), you can pass the path to that file within the container.

Configuration

Your Review Board container can be customized through environment variables on launch.

Most variables only apply when launching the container for the first time, as they’re responsible for setting up your initial Review Board configuration file and site directory.

Web Server Configuration

These variables apply any time a container is launched. You can stop a container and launch with the new settings.

NUM_WORKERS

The number of worker processes for the web server, Gunicorn.

This defaults to 4.

NUM_THREADS

The number of threads per worker process for the web server.

This defaults to 20.

REQUEST_TIMEOUT

The number of seconds until a request times out.

You may need to increase this if you find that your repositories are slow to respond.

This defaults to 120 seconds.

GUNICORN_FLAGS

Additional flags to pass to the Gunicorn executable.

See the Gunicorn settings documentation.

Tip

To determine the total number of requests that can be handled at the same time, multiply NUM_WORKERS by NUM_THREADS.

You will need to determine which numbers work best for you, based on the number of available CPUs and RAM.

Task Scheduling

REVIEWBOARD_CRONTAB

The path to a crontab file containing periodic tasks to run.

See Setting up Cron.

New in version 4.0.4.

Initial Configuration

These variables only apply on first launch for a container. To change the settings, remove your old containers and launch new ones.

Server Information

COMPANY

The name of your company.

This can be changed in the Review Board administration UI after launch.

DOMAIN

The fully-qualified domain name for your Review Board server.

The server will only respond to requests sent to this domain.

This cannot include http:// or https://.

Database

DATABASE_TYPE

The type of database to use for Review Board.

This can be either mysql or postgresql. It defaults to postgresql.

DATABASE_SERVER

The address to the database server. This must be reachable in the container.

This defaults to db, the name defined in our sample docker-compose.yaml files.

DATABASE_NAME

The name of the database on the database server.

This defaults to db, and must already be created before launching a container.

DATABASE_USERNAME

The username used to connect to and modify the database identified by DATABASE_NAME.

This defaults to reviewboard.

DATABASE_PASSWORD

The password belonging to the database user.

File System

REVIEWBOARD_GROUP_ID

The ID of the group that will own server-writable files and directories in the site directory.

This defaults to 1001, and should be changed if you’re working with an existing site directory.

REVIEWBOARD_USER_ID

The ID of the user that will own server-writable files and directories in the site directory.

This defaults to 1001, and should be changed if you’re working with an existing site directory.

Memcached

MEMCACHED_SERVER

The address to the memcached server. This must be reachable in the container.

This defaults to memcached:11211, using the name defined in our sample docker-compose.yaml files.

Installing Extensions

Our official Docker image comes with Power Pack and Review Bot pre-installed.

If you need to install additional extensions, you’ll need to build an image.

  1. Create a directory where your Dockerfile will live.

  2. If you’re installing custom extensions, create a packages/ directory inside it and place your extension .whl packages in it.

  3. Create a new Dockerfile containing:

    # Replace <version> with the Review Board version you want to use.
    FROM beanbag/reviewboard:<version>
    
    # You now have two options for installing packages:
    #
    # 1) If you want to install publicly-available packages:
    RUN    set -ex \
        && pip install --no-cache rbmotd==1.0.1
    
    # 2) If you want to install your own private packages:
    COPY packages/*.whl /tmp/packages
    RUN    set -ex \
        && pip install --no-cache --find-links=/tmp/packages \
               MyPackage1==1.0 MyPackage2==2.0.4 \
        && rm -rf /tmp/packages
    
  1. Build the package:

    $ docker build -t my-reviewboard .
    

    See the docker build documentation for more information on this command.

  2. Launch a container from your new image:

    $ docker run -P \
                 --name ... \
                 -v ... \
                 -e ... \
                 my-reviewboard