Discourse® packaged by Bitnami
Discourse is an open source discussion platform with built-in moderation and governance systems that let discussion communities protect themselves from bad actors even without official moderators.
Overview of Discourse® 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 discourse bitnami/discourse: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.
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 Discourse Docker Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry.
docker pull bitnami/discourse: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/discourse:[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
Discourse requires access to a PostgreSQL database to store information. We'll use the Bitnami Docker Image for PostgreSQL for the database requirements.
Run the application using Docker Compose
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitnami/containers/main/bitnami/discourse/docker-compose.yml > docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up -d
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.
Troubleshooting discourse
If you need to run discourse administrative commands like Create admin account from console, you can do so by executing a shell inside the container and running with the proper environment variables.
cd /opt/bitnami/discourse
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake admin:create
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/discourse 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 PostgreSQL data.
The above examples define the Docker volumes named postgresql_data and discourse_data. The Discourse 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.
Configuration
The following section describes how to configure the application
Configuration files
You can mount your configuration files to the /opt/bitnami/discourse/mounted-conf directory. Make sure that your configuration files follow the standardized names used by Discourse. Some of the most common files include:
discourse.confdatabase.ymlsite_settings.yml
The set of default standard configuration files may be found here. You may refer to the the Discourse webpage for further details and specific configuration guides.
Environment variables
The following tables list the main variables you can set.
Customizable environment variables
| Name | Description | Default Value |
|---|---|---|
DISCOURSE_DATA_TO_PERSIST |
Files to persist relative to the Discourse installation directory. To provide multiple values, separate them with a whitespace. | plugins public/backups public/uploads |
DISCOURSE_ENABLE_HTTPS |
Whether to enable HTTPS for Discourse by default. | no |
DISCOURSE_EXTERNAL_HTTP_PORT_NUMBER |
External HTTP port for Discourse. | 80 |
DISCOURSE_EXTERNAL_HTTPS_PORT_NUMBER |
External HTTPS port for Discourse. | 443 |
DISCOURSE_HOST |
Discourse host name. | www.example.com |
DISCOURSE_PORT_NUMBER |
Port number in which Discourse will run. | 3000 |
DISCOURSE_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP |
Whether to perform initial bootstrapping for the application. | nil |
DISCOURSE_SITE_NAME |
Discourse site name. | My site! |
DISCOURSE_ENV |
Discourse environment mode. Allowed values: development, production, test. | production |
DISCOURSE_PRECOMPILE_ASSETS |
Whether to precompile assets during the initialization. Required when installing plugins. | yes |
DISCOURSE_ENABLE_CONF_PERSISTENCE |
Whether to enable persistence of the Discourse discourse.conf configuration file. |
no |
DISCOURSE_EXTRA_CONF_CONTENT |
Extra configuration to append to the discourse.conf configuration file. |
yes |
DISCOURSE_PASSENGER_SPAWN_METHOD |
Passenger method used for spawning application processes. Valid values: direct, smart. | direct |
DISCOURSE_PASSENGER_EXTRA_FLAGS |
Extra flags to pass to the Passenger start command. | nil |
DISCOURSE_USERNAME |
Discourse user name. | user |
DISCOURSE_PASSWORD |
Discourse user password. | bitnami123 |
DISCOURSE_EMAIL |
Discourse user e-mail address. | user@example.com |
DISCOURSE_FIRST_NAME |
Discourse user first name. | UserName |
DISCOURSE_LAST_NAME |
Discourse user last name. | LastName |
DISCOURSE_SMTP_HOST |
Discourse SMTP server host. | nil |
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT_NUMBER |
Discourse SMTP server port number. | nil |
DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER |
Discourse SMTP server user. | nil |
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD |
Discourse SMTP server user password. | nil |
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PROTOCOL |
Discourse SMTP server protocol to use. | nil |
DISCOURSE_SMTP_AUTH |
Discourse SMTP authentication method. Allowed values: login, plain, cram_md5. | login |
DISCOURSE_SMTP_OPEN_TIMEOUT |
Discourse smtp_open_timeout configuration override. |
nil |
DISCOURSE_SMTP_READ_TIMEOUT |
Discourse smtp_read_timeout configuration override. |
nil |
DISCOURSE_DATABASE_HOST |
Database server host. | $DISCOURSE_DEFAULT_DATABASE_HOST |
DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER |
Database server port. | 5432 |
DISCOURSE_DATABASE_NAME |
Database name. | bitnami_discourse |
DISCOURSE_DATABASE_USER |
Database user name. | bn_discourse |
DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PASSWORD |
Database user password. | nil |
DISCOURSE_DB_BACKUP_HOST |
Database backup server host. | $DISCOURSE_DATABASE_HOST |
DISCOURSE_DB_BACKUP_PORT |
Database backup server port. | $DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER |
DISCOURSE_REDIS_HOST |
Redis(R) server host. | $DISCOURSE_DEFAULT_REDIS_HOST |
DISCOURSE_REDIS_PORT_NUMBER |
Redis(R) server port. | 6379 |
DISCOURSE_REDIS_PASSWORD |
Redis(R) user password. | nil |
DISCOURSE_REDIS_USE_SSL |
Whether to enable SSL for Redis(R). | no |
DISCOURSE_REDIS_DB |
Redis(R) database number. | 0 |
Read-only environment variables
| Name | Description | Value |
|---|---|---|
DISCOURSE_BASE_DIR |
Discourse installation directory. | ${BITNAMI_ROOT_DIR}/discourse |
DISCOURSE_CONF_FILE |
Configuration file for Discourse. | ${DISCOURSE_BASE_DIR}/config/discourse.conf |
YARN_CACHE_FOLDER |
Yarn cache folder | ${DISCOURSE_BASE_DIR}/tmp/cache |
DISCOURSE_VOLUME_DIR |
Discourse directory for mounted configuration files. | ${BITNAMI_VOLUME_DIR}/discourse |
DISCOURSE_DAEMON_USER |
Discourse system user. | discourse |
DISCOURSE_DAEMON_GROUP |
Discourse system group. | discourse |
DISCOURSE_DEFAULT_DATABASE_HOST |
Default database server host. | postgresql |
DISCOURSE_DEFAULT_REDIS_HOST |
Default Redis(R) server host. | redis |
When you start the Discourse 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 DISCOURSE_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 Discourse container to an existing database
The Bitnami Discourse container supports connecting the Discourse application to an external database. In case the database already contains data from a previous Discourse installation, you need to set the variable DISCOURSE_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 DISCOURSE_SKIP_BOOTSTRAP to yes, values for environment variables such as DISCOURSE_USERNAME, DISCOURSE_PASSWORD or DISCOURSE_EMAIL will be ignored.
FIPS configuration in Bitnami Secure Images
The Bitnami Discourse® 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 Discourse Docker image sends the container logs to stdout. To view the logs:
docker logs discourse
Or using Docker Compose:
docker-compose logs discourse
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 discourse
Or using Docker Compose:
docker-compose stop discourse
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/discourse-backups:/backups --volumes-from discourse busybox \
cp -a /bitnami/discourse /backups/latest
Restoring a backup
Restoring a backup is as simple as mounting the backup as volumes in the containers.
For the PostgreSQL database container:
$ docker run -d --name postgresql \
...
- --volume /path/to/postgresql-persistence:/bitnami/postgresql \
+ --volume /path/to/postgresql-backups/latest:/bitnami/postgresql \
bitnami/postgresql:latest
For the Discourse container:
$ docker run -d --name discourse \
...
- --volume /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami/discourse \
+ --volume /path/to/discourse-backups/latest:/bitnami/discourse \
bitnami/discourse:latest
Notable Changes
2.7.0-debian-10-r4
- The size of the container image has been decreased.
- The configuration logic is now based on Bash scripts in the rootfs/ folder.
2.4.4-debian-10-r8 release
- Discourse and Sidekiq now make use of the same volume to persist data. This solves issues related to being unable to locate some files generated on-demand by the Sidekiq job scheduler.
2.3.2-debian-9-r48 and 2.3.2-ol-7-r47
- The Discourse container now uses Passenger's 'direct' process spawning method (instead of the default 'smart'), which fixes a bug where settings would randomly revert back to the original values. This setting may cause an increase in memory usage. It is possible to configure the spawning method by setting the
DISCOURSE_PASSENGER_SPAWN_METHODenvironment variable.
2.2.5-debian-9-r9 and 2.2.5-ol-7-r8
- It is now possible to import existing Discourse databases from other installations. In order to do this, use the environment variable
DISCOURSE_SKIP_INSTALL, which forces the container not to run the initial Discourse setup wizard.
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.