this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26728988

Hi - I'm rebuilding my homelab and want to give docker compose another try. It looks like Watchtower is years out of date now. I see two forks that look more promising per https://techgaun.github.io/active-forks/index.html#https://github.com/containrrr/watchtower

These two: https://github.com/beatkind/watchtower https://github.com/nicholas-fedor/watchtower

The former seems to have more activity. What are you all using?

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[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (6 children)

Those of you self hosters who use watchtower, what's your use case?

[–] morethanevil@lemmy.fedifriends.social 9 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I only let me notify about updates. I don't want autoupdates, because some projects may have breaking changes (looking at you Immich 😁)

I get a message from watchtower over Gotify and then I can read the changelog

[–] blazeknave@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've been thinking about this. Can you do that with watchtower? Don't need diem or anything?

[–] morethanevil@lemmy.fedifriends.social 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It is very easy. Here is my compose:

services:
  watchtower:
    image: containrrr/watchtower
    container_name: watchtower
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    command: --interval 10800
    logging:
      driver: local
    environment:
          WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_URL: gotify://
          WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATIONS_HOSTNAME: Fancy name
          WATCHTOWER_MONITOR_ONLY: true
          WATCHTOWER_WARN_ON_HEAD_FAILURE: never

Every 3 hours it will check for updates, send a message via Gotify and pull the new images. It will not restart the containers with the new images.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Is it possible to have it auto update say one container and notify the rest?

[–] VeryNiiiice@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Yes. There is a label you would need to apply to all of your containers to specify whether or not to update: com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.monitor-only=true

No, because MONITOR_ONLY is for all

[–] bigDottee@geekroom.tech 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Honestly I think this might be a better way than what I’m using now. I’ve subbed to ~~dockerrelease.io~~ (edit: docker-notify.com) and releasealert.dev … get spammed all day everyday because the devs keep pushing all sorts of updates to old branches… or because those sites aren’t configured well.

[–] mac@lemm.ee 2 points 4 days ago

I just use RSS for this ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

You can use scopes to limit updates to pre-determinded containers.

[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago

Automatic updates. Works like a dream. Depending on what you are running it can obviously cause issues, either server side breaking or server,client communication issues

[–] ZeldaFreak@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Auto update. Works like a charm, except PostgreSQL. For me it's good enough and even though works with containers, where they don't recommend it. I do have backups and for my private time, I don't get paid, so it should be as maintenance as possible from my side.

I do check from time to time if something is broken and I noticed a container where they removed a version tag, I was using. The "biggest" thing that was broken, was my gitea server where they changed the config for the default Theme.

Also that's why I hate PostgreSQL. It requires manual labor for updating. Had a recipe Docker and they cut support for previous major version quickly. Not good. That stuff could break, ist an option with every update. This is why backups exist. As a single user, it's not a problem. For a big system, I wouldn't do auto updates, so I can check if everything works.

[–] blazeknave@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

ADHD and not technical by trade so it's not in my DNA to remember

[–] BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago

I use it to auto update nginx and haproxy containers, since they adhere very well to semver there is very little risk of breakage if you use the correct tag and not just :latest. I haven't had a single issue in many years, and it's nice to know that I'll get critical security updates within 24h of images being pushed.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Thw only it provides: Auto-updating.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

I just have it send a notification of available update. No auto for me.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah but what are you updating that is so non-critical you can trust watchtower to update it unattended, without reading release notes?

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 days ago

traefik, authelia, the *arrs etc.
I disabled auto updates for databases.