containers/bitnami/moodle

Bitnami LMS powered by Moodle™ LMS

Moodle™ LMS is an open source online Learning Management System widely used at universities, schools, and corporations. It is modular and highly adaptable to any type of online learning.

Overview of Bitnami LMS powered by Moodle™ LMS Disclaimer: The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies. We do not provide commercial license of any of these products. This listing has an open source license. Moodle(TM) LMS is run and maintained by Moodle HQ, that is a completely and separate project from Bitnami.

TL;DR

docker run --name moodle bitnami/moodle: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 deployment.

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 Moodle™ 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 Chart for Moodle™ GitHub repository.

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 Docker Image for Moodle™ is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull bitnami/moodle: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/moodle:[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 .

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/moodle path and another at /bitnami/moodledata. If the mounted directory is empty, it will be initialized on the first run. Additionally you should mount a volume for persistence of the MariaDB data.

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.

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
MOODLE_DATA_DIR	Directory where to store Moodle data files.	${BITNAMI_VOLUME_DIR}/moodledata
MOODLE_DATA_TO_PERSIST	Files to persist relative to the Moodle installation directory. To provide multiple values, separate them with a whitespace.	$MOODLE_BASE_DIR
MOODLE_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP	Whether to perform initial bootstrapping for the application.	nil
MOODLE_INSTALL_EXTRA_ARGS	Extra arguments to pass to the Moodle install.php script.	nil
MOODLE_SITE_NAME	Moodle site name.	New Site
MOODLE_HOST	Moodle www root.	nil
MOODLE_CRON_MINUTES	Moodle cron frequency in minutes.	1
MOODLE_REVERSEPROXY	Activate the reverseproxy feature of Moodle.	no
MOODLE_SSLPROXY	Activate the sslproxy feature of Moodle.	no
MOODLE_LANG	Allow to define default site language	en
MOODLE_USERNAME	Moodle user name.	user
MOODLE_PASSWORD	Moodle user password.	bitnami
MOODLE_EMAIL	Moodle user e-mail address.	user@example.com
MOODLE_SMTP_HOST	Moodle SMTP server host.	nil
MOODLE_SMTP_PORT_NUMBER	Moodle SMTP server port number.	nil
MOODLE_SMTP_USER	Moodle SMTP server user.	nil
MOODLE_SMTP_PASSWORD	Moodle SMTP server user password.	nil
MOODLE_SMTP_PROTOCOL	Moodle SMTP server protocol.	nil
MOODLE_DATABASE_TYPE	Database type to be used for the Moodle installation.	mariadb
MOODLE_DATABASE_HOST	Database server host.	mariadb
MOODLE_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER	Database server port.	3306
MOODLE_DATABASE_NAME	Database name.	bitnami_moodle
MOODLE_DATABASE_USER	Database user name.	bn_moodle
MOODLE_DATABASE_PASSWORD	Database user password.	nil

Read-only environment variables

Name	Description	Value
MOODLE_BASE_DIR	Moodle installation directory.	${BITNAMI_ROOT_DIR}/moodle
MOODLE_CONF_FILE	Configuration file for Moodle.	${MOODLE_BASE_DIR}/config.php
MOODLE_VOLUME_DIR	Persisted directory for Moodle files.	${BITNAMI_VOLUME_DIR}/moodle
PHP_DEFAULT_MEMORY_LIMIT	Default PHP memory limit.	256M
PHP_DEFAULT_MAX_INPUT_VARS	Default maximum amount of input variables for PHP scripts.	5000

When you start the Moodle™ 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 MOODLE_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.

Load balancer

This would be an instance ready to be put behind the NGINX load balancer.

• Modify the docker-compose.yml file present in this repository:

  moodle:
    ...
    environment:
      - MOODLE_HOST=example.com
      - MOODLE_REVERSEPROXY=true
      - MOODLE_SSLPROXY=true
  ...
  

• For manual execution:

  docker run -d --name moodle -p 80:8080 -p 443:8443 \
    --env MOODLE_HOST=example.com \
    --env MOODLE_REVERSEPROXY=true \
    --env MOODLE_SSLPROXY=true \
    --network moodle-tier \
    --volume /path/to/moodle-persistence:/bitnami/moodle \
    --volume /path/to/moodledata-persistence:/bitnami/moodledata \
    bitnami/moodle:latest
  

Installing additional language packs

By default, this container packs a generic English version of Moodle™. Nevertheless, more Language Packs can be added to the default configuration using the in-platform Administration interface. In order to fully support a new Language Pack it is also a requirement to update the system's locales files. To do that, you have several options:

Build the default image with the EXTRA_LOCALES build-time variable

You can add extra locales using the EXTRA_LOCALES build-time variable when building the Docker image. The values must be separated by commas or semicolons (and optional spaces), and refer to entries in the /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED file inside the container.

Enable all supported locales using the WITH_ALL_LOCALES build-time variable

You can generate all supported locales by setting the build environment variable WITH_ALL_LOCALES=yes. Note that the generation of all the locales takes some time.

Extending the default image

Finally, you can extend the default image and adding as many locales as needed:

FROM bitnami/moodle
RUN echo "es_ES.UTF-8 UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen && locale-gen

Bear in mind that in the example above es_ES.UTF-8 UTF-8 is the locale needed for the desired Language Pack to install. You may change this value to the locale corresponding to your pack.

FIPS configuration in Bitnami Secure Images

The Bitnami Bitnami LMS powered by Moodle™ LMS 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 Docker image for Moodle™ sends the container logs to stdout. To view the logs:

docker logs moodle

Or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose logs moodle

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.

By default, the logging of debug information is disabled. You can enable it by setting the environment variable BITNAMI_DEBUG to true.

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 moodle

Or using Docker Compose:

docker-compose stop moodle

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/moodle-backups:/backups --volumes-from moodle busybox \
  cp -a /bitnami/moodle /backups/latest

Restoring a backup

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

For the MariaDB database container:

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

For the Moodle™ container:

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

Customize this image

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

Extend this image

Before extending this image, please note there are certain configuration settings you can modify using the original image:

• Settings that can be adapted using environment variables. For instance, you can change the ports used by Apache for HTTP and HTTPS, by setting the environment variables APACHE_HTTP_PORT_NUMBER and APACHE_HTTPS_PORT_NUMBER respectively.
• Adding custom virtual hosts.
• Replacing the 'httpd.conf' file.
• Using custom SSL certificates.

If your desired customizations cannot be covered using the methods mentioned above, extend the image. To do so, create your own image using a Dockerfile with the format below:

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

Here is an example of extending the image with the following modifications:

• Install the vim editor
• Modify the Apache configuration file
• Modify the ports used by Apache

FROM bitnami/moodle

## Install 'vim'
RUN install_packages vim

## Enable mod_ratelimit module
RUN sed -i -r 's/#LoadModule ratelimit_module/LoadModule ratelimit_module/' /opt/bitnami/apache/conf/httpd.conf

## Modify the ports used by Apache by default
# It is also possible to change these environment variables at runtime
ENV APACHE_HTTP_PORT_NUMBER=8181
ENV APACHE_HTTPS_PORT_NUMBER=8143
EXPOSE 8181 8143

Based on the extended image, you can update the docker-compose.yml file present in this repository to add other features:

   moodle:
-    image: bitnami/moodle:latest
+    build: .
     ports:
-      - 80:8080
-      - 443:8443
+      - 80:8181
+      - 443:8143
     environment:
       ...
+      - PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT=512m
     ...

Notable Changes

3.9.0-debian-10-r17

• The size of the container image has been decreased.
• The configuration logic is now based on Bash scripts in the rootfs/ folder.
• The Moodle™ container now supports the "non-root" user approach, but it still runs as the root user by default. When running as a non-root user, all services will be run under the same user and Cron jobs will be disabled as crond requires to be run as a superuser. To run as a non-root user, change USER root to USER 1001 in the Dockerfile, or specify user: 1001 in docker-compose.yml. Related changes:
  • The HTTP/HTTPS ports exposed by the container are now 8080/8443 instead of 80/443.
  • Backwards compatibility is not guaranteed when data is persisted using docker or docker-compose. We highly recommend migrating the Moodle™ site by exporting its content, and importing it on a new Moodle™ container.

3.7.1-debian-9-r38 and 3.7.1-ol-7-r40

• It is now possible to use existing Moodle™ databases from other installations. In order to do this, use the environment variable MOODLE_SKIP_INSTALL, which forces the container not to run the initial Moodle™ setup wizard.

3.7.0-debian-9-r12 and 3.7.0-ol-7-r13

• This image has been adapted so it's easier to customize. See the Customize this image section for more information.
• The Apache configuration volume (/bitnami/apache) has been deprecated, and support for this feature will be dropped in the near future. Until then, the container will enable the Apache configuration from that volume if it exists. By default, and if the configuration volume does not exist, the configuration files will be regenerated each time the container is created. Users wanting to apply custom Apache configuration files are advised to mount a volume for the configuration at /opt/bitnami/apache/conf, or mount specific configuration files individually.
• The PHP configuration volume (/bitnami/php) has been deprecated, and support for this feature will be dropped in the near future. Until then, the container will enable the PHP configuration from that volume if it exists. By default, and if the configuration volume does not exist, the configuration files will be regenerated each time the container is created. Users wanting to apply custom PHP configuration files are advised to mount a volume for the configuration at /opt/bitnami/php/conf, or mount specific configuration files individually.
• Enabling custom Apache certificates by placing them at /opt/bitnami/apache/certs has been deprecated, and support for this functionality will be dropped in the near future. Users wanting to enable custom certificates are advised to mount their certificate files on top of the preconfigured ones at /certs.

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.