containers/bitnami/ghost

Bitnami Secure Image for Ghost

Ghost is an open source publishing platform designed to create blogs, magazines, and news sites. It includes a simple markdown editor with preview, theming, and SEO built-in to simplify editing.

Overview of Ghost Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

TL;DR

docker run --name ghost bitnami/ghost:latest

Warning: This quick setup is only intended for development environments. You are encouraged to change the insecure default credentials and check out the available configuration options in the Environment Variables section for a more secure d eployment.

Why use Bitnami Secure Images?

Those are hardened, minimal CVE images built and maintained by Bitnami. Bitnami Secure Images are based on the cloud-optimized, security-hardened enterprise OS Photon Linux. Why choose BSI images?

• Hardened secure images of popular open source software with Near-Zero Vulnerabilities
• Vulnerability Triage & Prioritization with VEX Statements, KEV and EPSS Scores
• Compliance focus with FIPS, STIG, and air-gap options, including secure bill of materials (SBOM)
• Software supply chain provenance attestation through in-toto
• First class support for the internet’s favorite Helm charts

Each image comes with valuable security metadata. You can view the metadata in our public catalog here. Note: Some data is only available with commercial subscriptions to BSI.

If you are looking for our previous generation of images based on Debian Linux, please see the Bitnami Legacy registry.

How to deploy Ghost in Kubernetes?

Deploying Bitnami applications as Helm Charts is the easiest way to get started with our applications on Kubernetes. Read more about the installation in the Bitnami Ghost Chart GitHub repository.

Why use a non-root container?

Non-root container images add an extra layer of security and are generally recommended for production environments. However, because they run as a non-root user, privileged tasks are typically off-limits. Learn more about non-root containers in our docs.

Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

Learn more about the Bitnami tagging policy and the difference between rolling tags and immutable tags in our documentation page.

Get this image

The recommended way to get the Bitnami Ghost Docker Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull bitnami/ghost:latest

To use a specific version, you can pull a versioned tag. You can view the list of available versions in the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull bitnami/ghost:[TAG]

If you wish, you can also build the image yourself by cloning the repository, changing to the directory containing the Dockerfile and executing the docker build command. Remember to replace the APP, VERSION and OPERATING-SYSTEM path placeholders in the example command below with the correct values.

git clone https://github.com/bitnami/containers.git
cd bitnami/APP/VERSION/OPERATING-SYSTEM
docker build -t bitnami/APP:latest .

How to use this image

Ghost requires access to a MySQL or MariaDB database to store information. We'll use the Bitnami Docker Image for MySQL for the database requirements.

Run the application using Docker Compose

Please be aware this file has not undergone internal testing. Consequently, we advise its use exclusively for development or testing purposes. For production-ready deployments, we highly recommend utilizing its associated Bitnami Helm chart.

Persisting your application

If you remove the container all your data will be lost, and the next time you run the image the database will be reinitialized. To avoid this loss of data, you should mount a volume that will persist even after the container is removed.

For persistence you should mount a directory at the /bitnami/ghost path. If the mounted directory is empty, it will be initialized on the first run. Additionally you should mount a volume for persistence of the MySQL data.

The above examples define the Docker volumes named mysql_data and ghost_data. The Ghost application state will persist as long as volumes are not removed.

To avoid inadvertent removal of volumes, you can mount host directories as data volumes. Alternatively you can make use of volume plugins to host the volume data.

Note

As this is a non-root container, the mounted files and directories must have the proper permissions for the UID 1001.

Configuration

The following section describes the supported environment variables

Environment variables

The following tables list the main variables you can set.

Customizable environment variables

Name	Description	Default Value
GHOST_DATA_TO_PERSIST	Files to persist relative to the Ghost installation directory. To provide multiple values, separate them with a whitespace.	content config.production.json
GHOST_ENABLE_HTTPS	Whether to enable HTTPS for Ghost by default.	no
GHOST_EXTERNAL_HTTP_PORT_NUMBER	External HTTP port for Ghost.	80
GHOST_EXTERNAL_HTTPS_PORT_NUMBER	External HTTPS port for Ghost.	443
GHOST_HOST	Ghost host name.	localhost
GHOST_PORT_NUMBER	Port number in which Ghost will run.	nil
GHOST_BLOG_TITLE	Ghost blog title.	"User's blog"
GHOST_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP	Whether to perform initial bootstrapping for the application.	nil
GHOST_USERNAME	Ghost user name.	user
GHOST_PASSWORD	Ghost user password.	bitnami123
GHOST_EMAIL	Ghost user e-mail address.	user@example.com
GHOST_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS	Ghost SMTP from address.	nil
GHOST_SMTP_HOST	Ghost SMTP server host.	nil
GHOST_SMTP_PORT_NUMBER	Ghost SMTP server port number.	nil
GHOST_SMTP_USER	Ghost SMTP server user.	nil
GHOST_SMTP_PASSWORD	Ghost SMTP server user password.	nil
GHOST_SMTP_PROTOCOL	Ghost SMTP server protocol to use.	nil
GHOST_DATABASE_HOST	Database server host.	$GHOST_DEFAULT_DATABASE_HOST
GHOST_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER	Database server port.	3306
GHOST_DATABASE_NAME	Database name.	bitnami_ghost
GHOST_DATABASE_USER	Database user name.	bn_ghost
GHOST_DATABASE_PASSWORD	Database user password.	nil
GHOST_DATABASE_ENABLE_SSL	Whether to enable SSL for database connection	no
GHOST_DATABASE_SSL_CA_FILE	Path to the database SSL CA file	nil

Read-only environment variables

Name	Description	Value
GHOST_BASE_DIR	Ghost installation directory.	${BITNAMI_ROOT_DIR}/ghost
GHOST_BIN_DIR	Ghost bin directory.	${GHOST_BASE_DIR}/bin
GHOST_LOG_FILE	Ghost log file.	${GHOST_BASE_DIR}/content/logs/ghost.log
GHOST_CONF_FILE	Configuration file for Ghost.	${GHOST_BASE_DIR}/config.production.json
GHOST_PID_FILE	Path to the Ghost PID file.	${GHOST_BASE_DIR}/.ghostpid
GHOST_VOLUME_DIR	Ghost directory for mounted configuration files.	${BITNAMI_VOLUME_DIR}/ghost
GHOST_DAEMON_USER	Ghost system user.	ghost
GHOST_DAEMON_GROUP	Ghost system group.	ghost
GHOST_DEFAULT_PORT_NUMBER	Default Ghost port number to enable at build time.	2368
GHOST_DEFAULT_DATABASE_HOST	Default database server host.	mysql

When you start the Ghost image, you can adjust the configuration of the instance by passing one or more environment variables either on the docker-compose file or on the docker run command line.

Examples

SMTP configuration

The GHOST_SMTP_* environment variables allows you configure the SMTP settings in the application. Please take a look at the environment variables information above for more information.

Connect Ghost container to an existing database

The Bitnami Ghost container supports connecting the Ghost application to an external database. In case the database already contains data from a previous Ghost installation, you need to set the variable GHOST_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP to yes. Otherwise, the container would execute the installation wizard and could modify the existing data in the database. Note that, when setting GHOST_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP to yes, values for environment variables such as GHOST_USERNAME, GHOST_PASSWORD or GHOST_EMAIL will be ignored.

FIPS configuration in Bitnami Secure Images

The Bitnami Ghost Docker image from the Bitnami Secure Images catalog includes extra features and settings to configure the container with FIPS capabilities. You can configure the next environment variables:

• OPENSSL_FIPS: whether OpenSSL runs in FIPS mode or not. yes (default), no.

Logging

The Bitnami Ghost Docker image sends the container logs to stdout. To view the logs:

docker logs ghost

Or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose logs ghost

You can configure the containers logging driver using the --log-driver option if you wish to consume the container logs differently. In the default configuration docker uses the json-file driver.

Maintenance

Backing up your container

To backup your data, configuration and logs, follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Stop the currently running container

docker stop ghost

Or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose stop ghost

Step 2: Run the backup command

We need to mount two volumes in a container we will use to create the backup: a directory on your host to store the backup in, and the volumes from the container we just stopped so we can access the data.

docker run --rm -v /path/to/ghost-backups:/backups --volumes-from ghost busybox \
  cp -a /bitnami/ghost /backups/latest

Restoring a backup

Restoring a backup is as simple as mounting the backup as volumes in the containers.

For the MySQL database container:

 $ docker run -d --name mysql \
   ...
-  --volume /path/to/mysql-persistence:/bitnami/mysql \
+  --volume /path/to/mysql-backups/latest:/bitnami/mysql \
   bitnami/mysql:latest

For the Ghost container:

 $ docker run -d --name ghost \
   ...
-  --volume /path/to/ghost-persistence:/bitnami/ghost \
+  --volume /path/to/ghost-backups/latest:/bitnami/ghost \
   bitnami/ghost:latest

Customize this image

The Bitnami Ghost Docker image is designed to be extended so it can be used as the base image for your custom web applications.

Extend this image

To do so, create your own image using a Dockerfile with the format below:

FROM bitnami/ghost
## Put your customizations below
...

This example shows how to install the Storage Adapter for S3.

FROM bitnami/ghost:latest

## Change user to perform privileged actions
USER root

COPY post_ghost_config.sh /
RUN mkdir -p /.npm \
    && chmod -R g+rwX,o+rw /.npm \
    && chmod +x /post_ghost_config.sh \
    && cp /opt/bitnami/scripts/ghost/entrypoint.sh /tmp/entrypoint.sh \
    && sed '/info "\*\* Ghost setup finished! \*\*"/ a . /post_ghost_config.sh' /tmp/entrypoint.sh > /opt/bitnami/scripts/ghost/entrypoint.sh
ENV AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID" \
    AWS_ACCESS_SECRET_KEY="AWS_ACCESS_SECRET_KEY" \
    AWS_REGION="AWS_REGION" \
    AWS_BUCKET="AWS_BUCKET"

## Revert to the original non-root user
USER 1001

RUN cd /bitnami/ghost \
    && npm i --silent ghost-storage-adapter-s3 \
    && mkdir -p /opt/bitnami/ghost/content/adapters/storage/s3 \
    && cp -r ./node_modules/ghost-storage-adapter-s3/* /opt/bitnami/ghost/content/adapters/storage/s3/

1. Prepare npm and install an adapter.
2. Add configuration for the adapter.

Create a script named post_ghost_config.sh using jq for adding configuration to the config.production.json

#!/bin/bash -e
cp /opt/bitnami/ghost/config.production.json /tmp/config.tmp.json

jq -r --arg keyId $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID --arg accessKey $AWS_ACCESS_SECRET_KEY --arg region $AWS_REGION --arg bucket $AWS_BUCKET \
    '. + { storage: { active: "s3", s3: { accessKeyId: $keyId, secretAccessKey: $accessKey, region: $region, bucket: $bucket } } }' \
    /tmp/config.tmp.json > /opt/bitnami/ghost/config.production.json

Add it to the app-entrypoint.sh just after ghost is configured.

Finally, build the container and set the required environment variables to configure the adapter.

Notable Changes

3.42.5-debian-10-r67 and 4.8.4-debian-10-r7

• The size of the container image has been decreased.
• The configuration logic is now based on Bash scripts in the rootfs/ folder.
• It is now possible to import existing Ghost databases from other installations. In order to do this, use the environment variable GHOST_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP, which forces the container not to run the initial Ghost setup wizard.

0.11.10-r2

• The ghost container has been migrated to a non-root container approach. Previously the container run as root user and the ghost daemon was started as ghost user. From now own, both the container and the ghost daemon run as user 1001. As a consequence, the configuration files are writable by the user running the ghost process.

License

Copyright © 2026 Broadcom. The term "Broadcom" refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.