On that note, a fully written out "demo" config.json file (or even a couple of them, one for Mongo and one for Redis) would be a nice to have in the documentation article about the nodebb config (in addition to the explanations of what each entry does).
I'm willing to throw that together if others would find it useful.
NODE_ENV is a nodejs variable, not a NodeBB variable.
I've been searching both this forum and the documentation site and I have been unable to find a list of all the possible environment variables that can be passed to NodeBB on startup.
Some of them can be found here:
https://community.nodebb.org/topic/4325/set-up-nodebb-via-environment-variables
This config.json documentation is here: https://docs.nodebb.org/en/latest/configuring/config.html
Can somebody please provide the complete list?
These are the variables I know of because I'm using them:
url=http://localhost:4567/forum Used to tell NodeBB where to run, also to define a subfolder.defaultTheme: Override default (Persona) theme. This has to be set to the npm package name of the theme you want to default to.database=redis|mongo Used to define which Database to use (redis or Mongo).redis__database=# where # is the number of the redis database to use. Note: 2 underscores between redis and database.redis with mongo for MongoDB.
redis__password=<password>redis__host=myredishost.example.commongo__username=mongousernameIs there a way to override which theme should be running by default when starting NodeBB for the first time?
@Xiph Thank you so much for the reply!
We're not actually pulling images from Docker Hub, as the default image out there seems to just pull an 0.5 branch. We're actually building the image from source using the Dockerfile that is included.
The info you included will be super helpful in getting this going the way we want. We will not be posting these images publicly, for the exact reasons you mentioned above (i.e. secret).
I'll probably be back with more questions though. 
Our work has taken us down the path of injecting a config.json file into the docker container. In spite of this, the container will still require the interactive configuration at runtime.
Also, it appears though that the npm package connect-redis isn't getting installed until the setup script is run, and if I attempt to circumvent the setup routine (i.e. with the config.json injected as stated above) the docker container startup will fail.
I've tried adding connect-redis to the package.json file, but this seems to have no effect.
Is there a way around this?
Hello,
I've been working on building NodeBB in a docker container, and I'm working with the latest branch.
When I initially launch the container (docker run -it ... nodebb_image ) I get the command line options to configure the container, which is fine (although I'd like to automate this if possible). The second time I launch the container however (docker start nodebb, i.e. reuse the container) it does not detect that NodeBB has been set up and tries to run the command-line setup again. In order to finish launching the container, I have to docker attach nodebb and kill the setup script. After that, NodeBB starts up as expected.
I've noticed in the Dockerfile contains this stanza: CMD node app --setup && npm start which seems to me like it would run setup by default no matter what. Is that the expected behavior? It seems to me that Docker users would want to create a container that could be restarted any time without requiring any other interaction other than docker start <container>.
I've also read the General-Purpose Dockerfile conversation (here: https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/pull/3160) and tried to apply some of that.
Is there an environment variable that can be set to tell NodeBB that it has been set up previously and to skip the setup or otherwise have? Or is there a list somewhere of all the docker run -e options that must/can be set up for a functioning instance?
Would pre-configuring NodeBB before building the docker container be a better and is this even an option?
Thanks,
Michael