Installing via Docker problems

General
1

Hi. I've just moved from a RPi running HassOS for Home-Assistant which had everything setup lovely to going it on my own with Ubuntu18.04 headless server with docker-compose/portainer.

I have everything setup apart from Node-Red and could do with a bit of help debugging.
This is my compose file relevant to node-red:

node-red:
    container_name: Node-Red
    image: nodered/node-red-docker
    ports:
      - 1880:1880
    volumes:
      - /opt/node-red:/data:rw
    restart: "no"
    depends_on:
      - mosquitto
      - homeassistant

It's failing on basically everything:
https://pastebin.com/qcbHCHwR

Thank you in advance if anyone has any advice.
Christian

2

While not a docker expert by any means (I haven't used it) I do notice in your error log that you are tunning node.js v3.10.10 which is so old. Version 4 is end of life.

Notice the line: npm ERR! Make sure you have the latest version of node.js and npm installed.

I would start by upgrading node.js

3

Hi, thanks for your reply.
I don't control that, it's in the docker, so there's something wrong there.

I got it working using the image:
nodered/node-red-docker:latest

Although I also tried a few others like:
nodered/node-red-docker:v8

Which didn't work.
Thanks anyway, I'm going to go experiment.
Christian

4

I have just looked at the docker files - you might want to be careful - there is a couple of threads (as yet unresolved) about NR failing to upgrade/install with 19.4

I note that the docker image has that in there in the json file.

If i have time later today i will give it a go and see what happens on a Docker host i run

Craig

5

That is entirely unrelated.

@christianwaite the very first error in the log is:

Error: EACCES: permission denied, open '/data/settings.js'

Its failing to access the settings file from the volume you've mounted. Check its permissions etc. Have a Google for permissions issues with docker volumes... It's a common thing.

6

Thanks @knolleary for pointing me in the right direction.
Every other docker hasn't had a problem, but I found some information about node-red docker starting up with a different user. Someone updated their fstab to get around it, but I found this solution of setting the user a bit better. All working now (previously I thought it was a version thing, but I'd also disabled the volumes as well, which was actually the problem).

This is now my docker-compose:
node-red:
container_name: Node-Red
image: nodered/node-red-docker:latest
ports:
- 1880:1880
user: '1000'
volumes:
- /opt/node-red:/data
depends_on:
- homeassistant

Thanks for the tip
Christian

7

Great - glad you got it working.

Have to admit, I'm not as well versed in docker as I should be. Open to feedback on improvements we could make to fit in better with whatever the current widely accepted best practice is.

8

I'm very new to it, so I don't have much of a clue myself, but I'd maybe give an example of docker-compose like I've posted as that seems to be the easiest way to get everything going in my opinion.

9

Don't think we have anything about compose in the repo or docs, so would be a good contribution if anyone is willing.

10

Nick,

One of the key things would be to pass in the UID/GID of the user that you want to run the docker as - this then resolves issues with the mount of the external filesystem

Here is an example of one i use that supports this

https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/sonarr/

P.S. I have been working with Docker for about a year now and use it farily extensively for a lot of tasks at home - happy to help out/get involved

regards

Craig