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tajniak81andClaude Opus 5 fe1e314df9 The store comes apart into the four roles it always had

`weed server -s3` was never one thing. Master, volume, filer and the S3
gateway ran as four goroutines under one process, on one volume, sharing one
fate. Splitting them into four containers changes nothing a client can see —
the same bucket answers on the same port — but it makes three things possible
that were not: the SeaweedFS admin UI, which wants a cluster to look at; a
restart or an upgrade of one role without the others; and, eventually, a second
volume server somewhere else. A fifth container carries the panel itself.

The single-process files stay exactly as they were. These are `.split.` twins
beside them, four in all, one per folder per shape, each with the .env example
of the same name that both READMEs already promise.

Identities are the part that could not simply be copied across. SeaweedFS picks
its credentials from one source, in order: an -s3.config file, the filer's IAM
store, then AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and its secret — and a higher source replaces a
lower one rather than adding to it. The existing files use the env pair, which
is fine precisely because nothing else writes identities there. Hand somebody a
panel that can, and the first user they create lands in the filer's store, the
store outranks the environment, and PocketBase's key stops existing — with the
first failed upload as the notification. So the gateway here is started with no
config file and no AWS_* at all, and the init container seeds PocketBase's
identity into the filer's store instead: the same store the panel writes. One
source of truth, PocketBase's key sitting in Object Store → Users beside every
other, keys minted there picked up without a restart, and a rotated
PB_S3_SECRET re-applied in place on the next boot rather than added as a second
identity.

That seeding is now allowed to fail. The bucket-create it grew out of was
best-effort — `|| true`, on the reasoning that the API Server's own S3 check
would report a gateway that was genuinely unreachable. That reasoning does not
survive the change: a gateway whose IAM store is empty does not refuse anyone,
it serves everyone, and the bucket would be wide open rather than unreachable.
So the step ends by grepping the configuration back for the access key, the
gateway waits on it completing successfully, and a seed that did not land stops
the stack instead of opening it.

The prod files publish the gateway and the panel, both on loopback, and nothing
else. Port 8080 on the volume server hands out file content by file id with no
authentication of any kind — the S3 credentials have no bearing on it — so
publishing it would publish every attachment in the stack, and the panel shows
what that port and the master's would. The panel's own password is required
rather than defaulted, because weed serves it with authentication switched off
entirely when it is empty, and a page that mints bucket credentials is the
bucket. It is passed as WEED_ADMIN_PASSWORD rather than a flag so it stays off
the process command line, and SEAWEED_ADMIN_BIND is the knob a remote host
needs, named after PB_BIND and API_BIND for the same reason.

Master, volume and filer share one /data mount rather than taking three of
their own. That is precisely the layout `weed server -dir=/data` writes — the
master's raft state, the volume's .dat and .idx, the filer's filerldb2, no two
of them naming the same file — so a stack can move between the single-process
file and its twin in either direction with nothing to migrate. A second volume
server would need its own, and the files say so where somebody would go looking.

The dev files map the volume server to 8081 on the host: 8080 there is already
the API Server, and in the all-in-one it is the API Server inside the image.

Unexercised: written on a machine without Docker, so none of the four has been
brought up. Every flag, health path and env name was read out of the pinned
4.45 source rather than recalled — -mdir, -volumeSizeLimitMB, -defaultStoreDir,
-max, admin's -master and -dataDir and WEED_ADMIN_*, the filer's and gateway's
/healthz, the panel's unauthenticated /health — and the four files were parsed,
interpolated against their examples, and checked for duplicate host ports. A
`docker compose config` on the target host is still the first thing to run.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-09-04 20:35:42 +02:00

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DriverVault — Docker (multi-container stack)

Three containers — PocketBase, API Server, Web App — on one compose network. This is the deployment to use unless you specifically want everything in a single image; for that see ../Docker-AIO.

Browser ─► Web App BFF (:8090) ──/api/*──► API Server (:8080) ─► PocketBase (:8070)

Only the Web App port is meant to be public. The API Server and the PocketBase admin UI are published for convenience and, in the prod file, bound to 127.0.0.1 by default.

File	Use
`docker-compose.yml`	builds from source in this repo — for development and local testing
`docker-compose.prod.yml`	pulls prebuilt images from the registry — for deployment
`.env.example` / `.env.prod.example`	copy to `.env` for the matching compose file
`pocketbase/`	the PocketBase image (official release binary on alpine)

Run it

cd Docker
cp .env.example .env        # then edit — PB_ADMIN_* have no safe defaults
docker compose up -d --build

Production, from the registry:

cp .env.prod.example .env   # then edit
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml pull
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

Then: web app on http://host:8090/, the API Server's superadmin panel on http://host:8080/, PocketBase admin on http://host:8070/_/.

First boot

Both steps are idempotent, so restarts and upgrades are safe:

PocketBase upserts its superuser from PB_ADMIN_EMAIL / PB_ADMIN_PASSWORD. This is the only way to create the first superuser — the REST API cannot bootstrap it. The API Server then authenticates with the same credentials.
The API Server creates any missing collections and reconciles existing ones, then creates the first app superadmin from DRIVERVAULT_SUPERADMIN_EMAIL / _PASSWORD if no such user exists.

Leave PB_BOOTSTRAP at true, including across upgrades. A release can add collections or fields the server needs, and a stack that skipped the bootstrap never gets them. The API Server self-heals exactly one thing — app_settings, the collection holding the plugin settings, which it creates on demand because it cannot serve the plugin panel without it. Every other schema change still depends on this flag, so turn it off only for a database you know already matches the release you are running.

No manual setup-pocketbase.mjs step is needed here — the server runs the same schema reconcile itself.

Volumes

Volume	Holds
`pb_data`	the PocketBase SQLite database and uploaded files — everything that persists

One volume, because the API Server keeps no state on disk. Plugin enable-state and global config live in the database like the rest of the settings, so backing up pb_data backs up the whole stack. It defaults to a Docker-managed named volume; set PB_DATA to an absolute host path in the prod file for a bind mount instead. PocketBase runs as root, so a root-owned host directory is fine.

One thing does not persist: the API Server panel's Settings → PocketBase and Settings → Web App screens apply immediately but only for the life of the container. Set POCKETBASE_URL, PB_ADMIN_EMAIL / PB_ADMIN_PASSWORD, WEBAPP_URL and CORS_ALLOW_ORIGINS in .env to change them permanently — in this stack the compose environment wins over anything the panel writes.

File storage (SeaweedFS / S3)

Uploaded files — document scans, service and refill receipts, workshop invoices, part photos — live inside pb_data by default, next to the database. Two further compose files put them in an S3 bucket instead, so the blobs and the database can be sized, backed up and moved independently. Nothing else changes: an attachment has always been fetched through the API Server (GET /api/service-records/{id}/file), never from a storage URL, so the Web App, the phone app and the Home Assistant plugin cannot tell the difference.

Each shape is one self-contained compose file — nothing to layer, nothing to remember — with an .env example of the same name:

Shape	From the registry	From source
Local storage — the default, unchanged	`docker-compose.prod.yml`	`docker-compose.yml`
SeaweedFS in this stack	`docker-compose.prod.seaweedfs.yml`	`docker-compose.seaweedfs.yml`
SeaweedFS, split into its roles	`docker-compose.prod.seaweedfs.split.yml`	`docker-compose.seaweedfs.split.yml`
An S3 endpoint outside it	`docker-compose.prod.s3.yml`	`docker-compose.s3.yml`

So docker-compose.prod.seaweedfs.yml is configured from .env.prod.seaweedfs.example, docker-compose.s3.yml from .env.s3.example, and so on:

cp .env.prod.seaweedfs.example .env    # then edit it — PB_S3_* have no defaults
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.seaweedfs.yml pull
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.seaweedfs.yml up -d

Set PB_S3_ACCESS_KEY and PB_S3_SECRET first — both storage files refuse to start without them. The SeaweedFS ones add a seaweedfs container (master, volume, filer and S3 gateway in one process, on its own seaweed_data volume) plus a one-shot seaweedfs-init that creates the bucket, because PocketBase never issues a CreateBucket of its own. The external-S3 ones add no containers at all: set PB_S3_ENDPOINT, and create the bucket yourself.

Split SeaweedFS

weed server -s3 runs master, volume, filer and gateway as four goroutines in one process. The .split. files run them as four containers, plus a fifth: the SeaweedFS admin UI on port 23646, where the cluster can be inspected and — under Object Store → Users — further S3 identities minted and revoked. Split also gets you per-role restarts and upgrades, per-role Prometheus metrics, and room to add a second volume server later.

Identities work differently there, and it matters. SeaweedFS reads credentials from, in descending priority: an -s3.config file, the filer's IAM store, then AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID / AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY — and a higher source replaces a lower one rather than adding to it. The single-process files use the env vars, which is why nothing else may write identities there: the first user added in a panel would displace PocketBase's key. So in the split files seaweedfs-init seeds PocketBase's identity into the filer's store instead — the same store the admin UI writes — and the gateway runs with no config file at all. One source of truth, PocketBase's key visible in the panel beside every other, and new keys picked up without a restart. Rotating PB_S3_SECRET in .env and restarting updates that identity in place.

Set SEAWEED_ADMIN_PASSWORD: weed admin serves the panel with no authentication when it is empty, and a panel that can mint bucket credentials is the bucket. In the prod file it is bound to loopback like PB_BIND and API_BIND, so a remote host needs SEAWEED_ADMIN_BIND=0.0.0.0 behind the same reverse proxy. That file publishes nothing for master, volume and filer — the volume server serves file content by id with no authentication of any kind, and the admin UI already shows what those ports would.

Switching between docker-compose.seaweedfs.yml and its .split. twin needs no migration: master, volume and filer share one /data mount, which is exactly the layout weed server -dir=/data writes.

On every boot the API Server's bootstrap writes PocketBase's Files storage settings from those variables, then asks PocketBase to prove it can reach the bucket. Watch for it in the log:

[api] bootstrap: ✓ file storage → S3 (drivervault at http://seaweedfs:8333)
[api] bootstrap: ✓ S3 storage reachable

A boot that finds the settings already correct logs • file storage already on S3 and writes nothing.

Two things to know before turning it on:

Existing files are not migrated. PocketBase copies nothing when the setting flips, so attachments uploaded before the switch stop resolving. Copy pb_data/storage/<collectionId>/<recordId>/<file> into the bucket root, keeping that layout, before enabling it — or start from a stack with no attachments.
Going back to the plain compose file is not an off switch. It leaves PocketBase pointed at the bucket, deliberately: files already written there are reachable only while it is. Move them back and turn it off in PocketBase's own admin UI. For the same reason a rotation of PB_S3_SECRET alone is invisible to the bootstrap — PocketBase masks the stored secret on read — so change another PB_S3_* value alongside it, or set it in the admin UI.

Charger control (OCPP)

Chargers in own/proxy mode dial in to /ocpp/{serial}, authenticating with a per-charger control token in an OCPP Basic-auth header. Two ports answer that path: the API Server's own, and the Web App's, whose BFF proxies /ocpp/ through. The second one matters because it is the address the panel hands out — the endpoint is derived from the host the panel itself was reached on, which is the Web App, unless OCPP_PUBLIC_URL says otherwise.

A plaintext ws:// puts the control token on the wire in the clear, so OCPP_REQUIRE_TLS defaults to true and non-TLS connections are rejected. OCPP_REQUIRE_TLS=false is for a trusted network you own end to end.

With a public hostname and TLS

Nothing in this stack terminates TLS. Put your own reverse proxy in front of the Web App port, give it a certificate and a hostname, and set four things by hand:

# in .env
OCPP_PUBLIC_URL=wss://drivervault.example.com
OCPP_REQUIRE_TLS=true
CORS_ALLOW_ORIGINS=https://drivervault.example.com
TRUST_FORWARDED_PROTO=true

TRUST_FORWARDED_PROTO is the easy one to miss: without it the Web App's BFF overwrites the proxy's X-Forwarded-Proto with its own plaintext hop and every charger is rejected as insecure. Only set it when that proxy really is the only way in — otherwise a charger could claim wss over a plaintext connection.

Point the charger's OCPP backend at the endpoint the panel then shows, with the control token as its authorization key. The charger has to resolve that hostname too: behind NAT that usually means hairpin NAT, or a split-DNS entry pointing the name at the LAN address.

Notes

docker-compose.yml builds the API Server and Web App from ../API Server and ../Web App, so run it from this directory with the repo checked out.
The Web App's Vue bundle is built with an empty VITE_API_BASE, so the browser uses same-origin /api and the BFF proxies it — no CORS in play.
CORS_ALLOW_ORIGINS therefore only matters if a browser calls the API Server directly. Native mobile apps are not subject to CORS at all.

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