phpBB3 docker image

Lightweight, Alpine based phpBB docker image.

Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

• 3.3, 3.3.4, latest bundled with PHP 8
• 3.2, 3.2.11 bundled with PHP 7.2

How to use this image

Initial installation

If you don't have a prepared phpBB database, you can use a standard phpBB installer script, just run a temporary container with PHPBB_INSTALL=true environment variable:

$ docker run -p 8000:80 --name phpbb-install -e PHPBB_INSTALL=true -d selim13/phpbb:3.3

Point your browser to the http://localhost:8000 to begin the installation process.

This image is bundled with SQLite3, MySQL and PostgresSQL database engines support. Others can be added by creating custom Dockerfile. For MySQL and PostgresSQL you can use standard container linking or use SQLite if you want a self sufficient container.

For SQLite3 set Database server hostname or DSN field to /phpbb/sqlite/sqlite.db. This file will be created on a docker volume and outside of the webserver's document root for security. Leave user name, password and database name fields blank.

After the installation process is complete you can safely stop this container:

$ docker stop phpbb-install

Starting

You can start a container as follows:

$ docker run --name phpbb -d selim13/phpbb:3.3

By default, it uses SQLite3 as a database backend, so you will need to supply it with a database file. It's default path is /phpbb/sqlite/sqlite.db.

You can import it from the temporary installation container above:

$ docker run --volumes-from phpbb-install --name phpbb -d selim13/phpbb:3.3

Or just copy it inside container if you have one from previous phpBB installations:

$ docker cp /path/at/host/sqlite.db phpbb:/www/sqlite/sqlite.db

For other database engines you will need to pass credentials and driver type using environment variables:

$ docker run --name phpbb     \
    -e PHPBB_DB_DRIVER=mysqli \
    -e PHPBB_DB_HOST=dbmysql  \
    -e PHPBB_DB_PORT=3306     \
    -e PHPBB_DB_NAME=phpbb    \
    -e PHPBB_DB_USER=phpbb    \
    -e PHPBB_DB_PASSWD=pass -d selim13/phpbb:3.3

Environment variables

This image utilises environment variables for basic configuration. Most of them are passed directly to phpBB's config.php or to the startup script.

PHPBB_INSTALL

If set to true, container will start with an empty config.php file and phpBB /install/ directory intact. This will allow you to initilalize a forum database upon fresh installation.

PHPBB_DB_DRIVER

Selects a database driver. phpBB3 ships with following drivers:

• mssql - MS SQL Server
• mysql - MySQL via outdated php extension
• mysqli - MySQL via newer php extension
• oracle - Oracle
• postgres - PostgreSQL
• sqlite - SQLite 2
• sqlite3 - SQLite 3

This image is bundled with support of sqlite3, mysqli and postgres drivers.

Default value: sqlite3

PHPBB_DB_HOST

Database hostname or ip address.

For the SQLite3 driver sets database file path.

Default value: /phpbb/sqlite/sqlite.db

PHPBB_DB_PORT

Database port.

PHPBB_DB_NAME

Supplies database name for phpBB3.

PHPBB_DB_USER

Supplies a user name for phpBB3 database.

PHPBB_DB_PASSWD

Supplies a user password for phpBB3 database.

If you feel paranoid about providing your database password in an environment variable, you can always ship it with a custom config.php file using volumes or by extending this image.

PHPBB_DB_TABLE_PREFIX

Table prefix for phpBB3 database.

Default value: phpbb_

PHPBB_DB_AUTOMIGRATE

If set to true, instructs a container to run database migrations by executing bin/phpbbcli.php db:migrate on every startup.

If migrations fail, container will refuse to start.

PHPBB_DB_WAIT

If set to true, container will wait for database service to become available. You will need to explicitly set PHPBB_DB_HOST and PHPBB_DB_PORT for this to work.

Use in conjunction with PHPBB_DB_AUTOMIGRATE to prevent running migrations before database is ready.

Won't work for SQLite database engine as it is always available.

PHPBB_DISPLAY_LOAD_TIME

If set to true, phpBB will display page loading time, queries count and peak memory usage at the bottom of the page.

PHPBB_DEBUG

If set to true, enables phpBB debug mode.

PHPBB_DEBUG_CONTAINER

Volumes

By default there are four volumes created for each container:

• /phpbb/sqlite
• /phpbb/www/files
• /phpbb/www/store
• /phpbb/www/images/avatars/upload

Additional configuration

This image is based on a stock official Alpine image with apache2 and php5 packages from the Alpine Linux repository, so you can drop their custom configuration files to /etc/apache2/conf.d and /etc/php5/conf.d.

Pass user's IP from proxy

If you are planning to start a container behind proxy (like nginx-proxy), it will probably be a good idea to get user's real IP instead of proxy one. For this, you can use Apache RemoteIP module. Create a configuration file:

LoadModule remoteip_module modules/mod_remoteip.so

RemoteIPHeader X-Real-IP
RemoteIPInternalProxy nginx-proxy

Here X-Real-IP is a header name, where proxy passed user's real IP and nginx-proxy is proxy host name.

Then push it to /etc/apache2/conf.d/ directory, for example, by extending this image:

FROM selim13/phpbb:3.3

COPY remoteip.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d