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Discourse® packaged by Bitnami

What is Discourse®?

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 d eployment.

⚠️ Important Notice: Upcoming changes to the Bitnami Catalog

Beginning August 28th, 2025, Bitnami will evolve its public catalog to offer a curated set of hardened, security-focused images under the new Bitnami Secure Images initiative. As part of this transition:

  • Granting community users access for the first time to security-optimized versions of popular container images.
  • Bitnami will begin deprecating support for non-hardened, Debian-based software images in its free tier and will gradually remove non-latest tags from the public catalog. As a result, community users will have access to a reduced number of hardened images. These images are published only under the “latest” tag and are intended for development purposes
  • Starting August 28th, over two weeks, all existing container images, including older or versioned tags (e.g., 2.50.0, 10.6), will be migrated from the public catalog (docker.io/bitnami) to the “Bitnami Legacy” repository (docker.io/bitnamilegacy), where they will no longer receive updates.
  • For production workloads and long-term support, users are encouraged to adopt Bitnami Secure Images, which include hardened containers, smaller attack surfaces, CVE transparency (via VEX/KEV), SBOMs, and enterprise support.

These changes aim to improve the security posture of all Bitnami users by promoting best practices for software supply chain integrity and up-to-date deployments. For more details, visit the Bitnami Secure Images announcement.

Why use Bitnami Secure Images?

  • Bitnami Secure Images and Helm charts are built to make open source more secure and enterprise ready.
  • Triage security vulnerabilities faster, with transparency into CVE risks using industry standard Vulnerability Exploitability Exchange (VEX), KEV, and EPSS scores.
  • Our hardened images use a minimal OS (Photon Linux), which reduces the attack surface while maintaining extensibility through the use of an industry standard package format.
  • Stay more secure and compliant with continuously built images updated within hours of upstream patches.
  • Bitnami containers, virtual machines and cloud images use the same components and configuration approach - making it easy to switch between formats based on your project needs.
  • Hardened images come with attestation signatures (Notation), SBOMs, virus scan reports and other metadata produced in an SLSA-3 compliant software factory.

Only a subset of BSI applications are available for free. Looking to access the entire catalog of applications as well as enterprise support? Try the commercial edition of Bitnami Secure Images today.

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.

You can see the equivalence between the different tags by taking a look at the tags-info.yaml file present in the branch folder, i.e bitnami/ASSET/BRANCH/DISTRO/tags-info.yaml.

Subscribe to project updates by watching the bitnami/containers GitHub repo.

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.

Using the Docker Command Line

Step 1: Create a network

docker network create discourse-network

Step 2: Create a volume for PostgreSQL persistence and create a PostgreSQL container

$ docker volume create --name postgresql_data
docker run -d --name postgresql \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env POSTGRESQL_USERNAME=bn_discourse \
  --env POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD=bitnami123 \
  --env POSTGRESQL_DATABASE=bitnami_discourse \
  --network discourse-network \
  --volume postgresql_data:/bitnami/postgresql \
  bitnami/postgresql:latest

Step 3: Create a volume for Redis persistence and create a Redis container

$ docker volume create --name redis_data
docker run -d --name redis \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --network discourse-network \
  --volume redis_data:/bitnami/redis \
  bitnami/redis:latest

Step 4: Create volumes for Discourse persistence and launch the container

$ docker volume create --name discourse_data
docker run -d --name discourse \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_USER=bn_discourse \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PASSWORD=bitnami123 \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_discourse \
  --env DISCOURSE_HOST=www.example.com \
  --network discourse-network \
  --volume discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse \
  bitnami/discourse:latest

Step 5: Launch the Sidekiq container

docker run -d --name sidekiq \
  --network discourse-network \
  --volume discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse \
  bitnami/discourse:latest /opt/bitnami/scripts/discourse-sidekiq/run.sh

Access your application at http://your-ip/

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.

If you detect any issue in the docker-compose.yaml file, feel free to report it or contribute with a fix by following our Contributing Guidelines.

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.

Mount host directories as data volumes with Docker Compose

This requires a minor change to the docker-compose.yml file present in this repository:

   postgresql:
     ...
     volumes:
-      - postgresql_data:/bitnami/postgresql
+      - /path/to/postgresql-persistence:/bitnami/postgresql
   ...
   redis:
     ...
     volumes:
-      - redis_data:/bitnami/redis
+      - /path/to/redis-persistence:/bitnami/redis
   ...
   discourse:
     ...
     volumes:
-      - discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse
+      - /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami/discourse
   ...
   sidekiq:
     ...
     volumes:
-      - discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse
+      - /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami/discourse
   ...
-volumes:
-  postgresql_data:
-    driver: local
-  redis_data:
-    driver: local
-  discourse_data:
-    driver: local

Mount host directories as data volumes using the Docker command line

Step 1: Create a network (if it does not exist)

docker network create discourse-network

Step 2. Create a PostgreSQL container with host volume

docker run -d --name postgresql \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env POSTGRESQL_USERNAME=bn_discourse \
  --env POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD=bitnami123 \
  --env POSTGRESQL_DATABASE=bitnami_discourse \
  --network discourse-network \
  --volume /path/to/postgresql-persistence:/bitnami/postgresql \
  bitnami/postgresql:latest

Step 3. Create a Redis container with host volume

docker run -d --name redis \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --network discourse-network \
  --volume /path/to/redis-persistence:/bitnami/redis \
  bitnami/redis:latest

Step 4. Create the Discourse container with host volumes

docker run -d --name discourse \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_USER=bn_discourse \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PASSWORD=bitnami123 \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_discourse \
  --env DISCOURSE_HOST=www.example.com \
  --network discourse-network \
  --volume /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami/discourse \
  bitnami/discourse:latest

Step 5. Create the Sidekiq container with host volumes

docker run -d --name sidekiq \
  --network discourse-network \
  --volume /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami/discourse \
  bitnami/discourse:latest

Configuration

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.conf
  • database.yml
  • site_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

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. If you want to add a new environment variable:

  • For docker-compose add the variable name and value under the application section in the docker-compose.yml file present in this repository:

    discourse:
  ...
  environment:
    - DISCOURSE_PASSWORD=my_password
  ...

  • For manual execution add a --env option with each variable and value:

    $ docker run -d --name discourse -p 80:8080 -p 443:8443 \
  --env DISCOURSE_PASSWORD=my_password \
  --network discourse-tier \
  --volume /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami \
  bitnami/discourse:latest

Examples

SMTP configuration using a Gmail account

This would be an example of SMTP configuration using a Gmail account:

  • Modify the environment variables used for the discourse and sidekiq containers in the docker-compose.yml file present in this repository:

      discourse:
    ...
    environment:
      ...
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT=587
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER=your_email@gmail.com
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD=your_password
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_PROTOCOL=tls
  ...
  sidekiq:
    ...
    environment:
      ...
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT=587
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER=your_email@gmail.com
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD=your_password
      - DISCOURSE_SMTP_PROTOCOL=tls
  ...

  • For manual execution:

    • First, create the Discourse container:

      $ docker run -d --name discourse -p 80:8080 -p 443:8443 \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_USER=bn_discourse \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_discourse \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT=587 \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER=your_email@gmail.com \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD=your_password \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_PROTOCOL=tls \
  --network discourse-tier \
  --volume /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami \
  bitnami/discourse:latest

    • Then, create the Sidekiq container:

      $ docker run -d --name sidekiq \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_USER=bn_discourse \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_discourse \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT=587 \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER=your_email@gmail.com \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_PASSWORD=your_password \
  --env DISCOURSE_SMTP_PROTOCOL=tls \
  --network discourse-tier \
  --volume /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami \
  bitnami/discourse:latest

In order to verify your configuration works properly, you can test your configuration parameters from the container itself.

docker run -u root -it bitnami/discourse:latest bash
install_packages swaks
swaks --to your_email@domain.com --from your_email@domain.com --server your.smtp.server.com --auth LOGIN --auth-user your_email@domain.com -tls

See the documentation on troubleshooting SMTP issues if there are problems.

Connect Discourse container to an existing database

The Bitnami Discourse container supports connecting the Discourse application to an external database. This would be an example of using an external database for Discourse.

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

       discourse:
     ...
     environment:
-      - DISCOURSE_DATABASE_HOST=mariadb
+      - DISCOURSE_DATABASE_HOST=mariadb_host
       - DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER=3306
       - DISCOURSE_DATABASE_NAME=discourse_db
       - DISCOURSE_DATABASE_USER=discourse_user
-      - ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes
+      - DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PASSWORD=discourse_password
     ...

  • For manual execution:

    $ docker run -d --name discourse\
  -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 \
  --network discourse-network \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_HOST=mariadb_host \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PORT_NUMBER=3306 \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_NAME=discourse_db \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_USER=discourse_user \
  --env DISCOURSE_DATABASE_PASSWORD=discourse_password \
  --volume discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse \
  bitnami/discourse:latest

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

Upgrade this image

Bitnami provides up-to-date versions of PostgreSQL and Discourse, including security patches, soon after they are made upstream. We recommend that you follow these steps to upgrade your container. We will cover here the upgrade of the Discourse container. For the PostgreSQL upgrade see: https://github.com/bitnami/containers/blob/main/bitnami/postgresql/README.md#user-content-upgrade-this-image

The bitnami/discourse:latest tag always points to the most recent release. To get the most recent release you can simple repull the latest tag from the Docker Hub with docker pull bitnami/discourse:latest. However it is recommended to use tagged versions.

Step 1: Get the updated image

docker pull bitnami/discourse:latest

Step 2: Stop the running container

Stop the currently running container using the command

docker-compose stop discourse

Step 3: Take a snapshot of the application state

Follow the steps in Backing up your container to take a snapshot of the current application state.

Step 4: Remove the currently running container

Remove the currently running container by executing the following command:

docker-compose rm -v discourse

Step 5: Run the new image

Update the image tag in docker-compose.yml and re-create your container with the new image:

docker-compose up -d

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_METHOD environment 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.

Contributing

We'd love for you to contribute to this container. You can request new features by creating an issue or submitting a pull request with your contribution.

Issues

If you encountered a problem running this container, you can file an issue. For us to provide better support, be sure to fill the issue template.

License

Copyright © 2025 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.