Dokku PaaS

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Overview

Dokku is the smallest open source Platform as a Service: a single-node, self-hosted alternative to Heroku that turns one instance into a git-push deploy platform. You add your own SSH key, push your application with git, and Dokku detects the language, builds it with Cloud Native or Heroku buildpacks (or from your Dockerfile), runs it as a Docker container and routes public traffic to it through nginx - no Kubernetes, no control plane, no external services. This image delivers Dokku fully installed with Docker Engine and nginx, so a working PaaS is online within a minute or two of launch.

## Why This Image Over Manual Installation

Standing Dokku up by hand means provisioning an instance, installing Docker and nginx, adding the Dokku apt repository, running its bootstrap non-interactively, and - crucially - making sure no shared deploy key is baked into the image. This image closes that gap. Dokku is preinstalled and pinned to a known version, Docker's storage lives on a dedicated, independently resizable data volume, and the image ships with ZERO deploy keys and no password login: the very first thing every operator does is add their own SSH public key, so access is theirs alone from the start.

## Application Stack

Dokku runs as a set of core plugins driven by the dokku CLI, on top of Docker Engine and nginx. Docker builds and runs each deployed app as a container; nginx is the front proxy that maps each app's virtual host to its container. On first boot the image sets a global wildcard domain from the instance's public IP (via nip.io) so your apps get working URLs with no DNS setup, and every deployed app is reachable at http://..nip.io.

## Deploy The Heroku Way

• Push with git over SSH and Dokku builds and deploys automatically
• Buildpack (Cloud Native / Heroku) or Dockerfile builds, your choice
• Per-app environment variables, domains, and zero-downtime deploys
• Official plugins for PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB and more datastores
• Automatic Let's Encrypt TLS for your app domains

## Security and Hardening

Dokku's access model is SSH public keys, not passwords - and this image ships with none baked in. The installer is preseeded to import no key, the build asserts the dokku user's authorized_keys file is empty before capture, and the Docker daemon listens only on its local unix socket, never over unauthenticated TCP. You register your own key with dokku ssh-keys:add on first use. The base OS is fully patched with unattended security updates enabled.

## Concrete Use Cases

• A self-hosted Heroku for a small team: deploy a handful of web apps and their databases to one instance with git push, and manage them from the dokku CLI - no orchestration platform to run.
• Review and staging environments: spin up per-branch app instances cheaply, each on its own nip.io subdomain, and tear them down when the branch merges.
• Cost-controlled production for side projects: run a production web service, its Postgres and its TLS on a single instance you fully own, without per-dyno platform fees.

## Ready To Use

SSH to the instance, add your public key with sudo dokku ssh-keys:add, create an app, and git push - Dokku and Docker are already running.

## cloudimg Support

Dokku is one of the most widely adopted open source PaaS platforms, with a large global community and thousands of production deployments.