Docker is a convenient and secure way to install server applications either locally or on a server you control. If you don’t have docker already running on your machine and are macOS user, consider giving OrbStack a try — it’s a super nice docker experience.

Conveniently, SilverBullet is published as a docker image on GHCR. The image comes in two flavors:

  • 64-bit Intel
  • 64-bit ARM (e.g. for Raspberry Pis and Apple Silicon macs)

There is no 32-bit version of SilverBullet. Most people run 64-bit OSes these days, an exception may be Raspberry Pis. Recent (RPI 3 and later) can run 64-bit Linux as well.

warning Warning To access SilverBullet outside of localhost you will need to set up TLS.

Release channels

Every release version of SilverBullet is tagged with its version number, but there are two release channels you can use (they automatically update):

  • :latest always points to the latest release
  • :v2 always points to the latest edge build (the last commit to main), use this if you want to live on the bleeding edge.

Container

  • The container binds to port 3000, so be sure to port-map that, e.g. via -p 3000:3000 (note: the first 3000 is the external port)
  • By default SilverBullet runs unauthenticated, this is not safe at it allows anybody on your network to access your instance freely. Therefore, in a docker setup always set the SB_USER=username:password environment variable (see below).
  • The container uses whatever is volume-mapped to /space as the space root folder. You can connect a docker volume, or a host folder to this, e.g. -v /home/myuser/space:/space
  • SilverBullet will detect the UNIX owner (UID and GID) of the folder mapped into /space and run the server process with the same UID and GID so that permissions will just magically work. If you’d like to override this UID, set the PUID and PGID environment variables (see Install/Configuration for details).
  • The Docker image is based on Alpine. If you'd like to install additional packages into it, see #Installing additional packages below.

note Note The same docker images are both available from GHCR and Docker Hub, use whichever you prefer.

Versions

To check the version you’re running, use the ${widgets.commandButton("Client: Version")} command. Note that after an upgrade you may have to reload your (browser) client twice, to fully activate the new version.

Docker Compose

Docker compose is a simple tool to manage running of multiple containers on a server you control, it is distributed with (modern) versions of docker. It is the recommended way to manage SilverBullet.

Below is a basic compose.yml that runs SilverBullet, check Install/Configuration for additional configuration options.

Instructions: * Replace the password defined in SB_USER with something sensible such as admin:b3stp4ssword3vah * This volume uses the ./space directory (will be auto-created if it doesn’t already exist) in the same directory as the compose.yml file as the place where SB will keep its space. You may replace this with whatever location you keep your notes.

services:
  silverbullet:
    image: ghcr.io/silverbulletmd/silverbullet:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
    - SB_USER=admin:password
    volumes:
      - ./space:/space
    ports:
      - 3000:3000

Boot this up via:

docker compose up -d

And watch for logs with:

docker compose logs -f

Upgrading

To upgrade, change the specific version you point to in your compose.yml file (not necessary when using :latest or :v2) and then:

docker compose pull
docker compose stop
docker compose up -d

Plain Docker

If you don’t want to use docker compose, you can run SilverBullet “raw” as follows:

# Create a local folder "space" to keep files in
mkdir -p space
# Run the docker container in the background
docker run -d --restart unless-stopped \
  --name silverbullet \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v ./space:/space \
  -e SB_USER=user:password \
  ghcr.io/silverbulletmd/silverbullet:latest

There you go!

Upgrades

To upgrade your version of SilverBullet, first pull the new image:

docker pull ghcr.io/silverbulletmd/silverbullet:latest
# Then stop the current container
docker stop silverbullet
# Remove the existing container
docker rm silverbullet

Then start the container again as before.

Installing additional packages

If you would like to install additional packages into your docker container (e.g. to call via API/shell), you can do so by creating a CONTAINER_BOOT page in your space. Whatever you put in this page, will be run as a bash script upon container boot (hence its name).

In practice, you’ll likely want to put apk add commands install the (Alpine) packages you would like to install.