Introduction

Cerb ships with a Docker configuration for local evaluation, development, and testing. This creates preconfigured containers for Nginx (web server), PHP/FPM (code), and MySQL (database).

By default, data is stored in two volumes (one for the database and the other for the ./storage/ directory). A virtual network is created to connect the containers.

Install Docker

First, make sure Docker Desktop or the CLI is installed.

Using Docker

Starting containers with Docker Compose

Navigate to the directory where you want to install a copy of Cerb. Then run the following commands:

git clone -b v10.4 https://github.com/cerb/cerb-release.git v10.4

# ... or download + unzip: https://github.com/cerb/cerb-release/archive/refs/heads/v10.4.zip

cd v10.4

cd install/docker

docker compose up --build

It will take a few minutes to build the container images the first time you run them. Afterward, the containers will start almost instantly.

Once the containers are running, open your browser to: http://localhost/

The guided installer will finish installing Cerb based on your needs. For testing we recommend disabling outbound email when prompted (this can always be re-enabled later). At the end of the installer you can also choose “Demo” mode to have test data to experiment with.

Updating Cerb

git stash

git pull origin --rebase

git stash pop

Changing the web server port

If you’re already using port 80 for a different project, you can bind Cerb to a different port (e.g. 8080) by editing the docker-compose.yml file before running docker compose up.

services:
  web:
    image: nginx:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
...

Connecting to the MySQL console

docker exec -it cerb-mysql-1 mysql -u root -p cerb

The default password is s3cr3t.

Stopping the containers

To pause the containers, use the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut or stop them from Docker Desktop.

Resume them later with docker compose up --build or the play button in Docker Desktop.

Deleting containers

To delete the containers and their data, use the command:

docker compose down --volumes

Editing code

You can edit files in your local filesystem and the changes will be reflected instantly within the containers.