Getting Started

Try it out

How to try out filebrowser -- no persistent database

with docker

To try out using docker run, (changes will not be saved on exit):

1. This will run with default config and no persistent db -- just to try it out. You can log in with admin/admin:

docker run -it -v /path/to/your/folder/to/use:/srv -p 80:80 gtstef/filebrowser

without docker

Go to releases and download the executable that matches your platform.

Note

You may need to enable executable permissions first. And platforms like macos will block and require allowing in security & privacy settings

By default, without a config file, you can execute the program (via running .\filebrowser.exe -c config.yaml on windows or ./filebrowser -c config.yaml on other platforms).

What is a config file? What should I use?

By default, starting v0.7.5 will run without a config file with a default source being the current directory.

However, a config file is generally necessary, you can download this example config and modify as needed with your sources path (absolute or relative paths are allowed).

What next?

Docker considerations

Note

docker images are found at gtstef/filebrowser and ghcr.io/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser -- use beta, stable tags. Avoid all dev tags, which have changes that could alter your database.

non-root filebrowser user in docker is possible. When running as non-root or filebrowser make sure you either specify a server.cacheDir that points to a directory the user has permission to (creating one beforehand if necessary). By default the filebrowser attempts to create tmp directory in current directory.

docker run -u filebrowser -it -v $(pwd)/config.yaml:/home/filebrowser/config.yaml -v /path/to/folder:/srv -p 80:80 gtstef/filebrowser

Docker Compose

2. I recommend using docker-compose if you want to run with a persistent database:

example docker-compose.yaml:

services:
  filebrowser:
    volumes:
      - '/path/to/folder:/folder'
      # optional if you want db to persist - configure a path under "database" dir in config file.
      - 'database:/home/filebrowser/database'
      - 'config.yaml:/home/filebrowser/config.yaml'
      # optional mount a temp directory to use. Generally, there is no need for this unless your user is not root or filebrowser.
      # - './tmp/:/home/filebrowser/tmp/'
    ports:
      - '80:80'
    image: gtstef/filebrowser
    # Optionally run as non-root filebrowser user
    #user: filebrowser
    restart: always

Then, make sure to mount a modified config file that points to the database file you want to use:

server:
  port: 80
  database: "database/database.db" # placing in the database directory so it shows up on the host with that volume mounted in `docker-compose.yaml`.
  sources:
    - path: /folder # corresponds to the folder mounted above in docker-compose

Whats next?

Ready to configure Filebrowser more? See configuration wiki.