You need to create a seperate user and add it to the docker group, because some containers will not run secure and properly when using the root user.
You can create a new non-root user by using the command seen below. Change <name> to whatever you want. I personally named the user that will own everything related to Docker just docker.
useradd -r -g docker <name>
These commands will make sure your user can properly access the mediaserver files:
chown -R <name>:docker /mnt/raid/media-server
chmod -R 0755 /mnt/raid/media-server
Running and managing Docker containers requires sudo privileges. You can give the user these priviliges by using the following command:
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
Next, you have to set some environmental variables that Docker containers should use.
These environmental variables will be used in the docker-compose.yml file by using ${X} where X is the name of the variable.
Create and edit the environmental variables file using the following command:
sudo nano /etc/environment
Add the following as separate lines at the end of the file:
PGID=113
PUID=999
TZ="America/New_York"
OPENVPN_USERNAME="username"
OPENVPN_PASSWORD="password"
TORRENT_USERNAME="username"
TORRENT_PASSWORD="password"
PGID and PUID are the user ID of the linux user, who you want to run the home server apps as, and group ID of docker. These can be obtained using the id command. Look for the uid=() and the groups=(docker) variables and fill them in your /etc/environment file. See more information about PGID and PUID here.
TZ is the timezone that you want to set for your containers. Get your TZ from this Timezone Database.
OPENVPN_USERNAME and OPENVPN_PASSWORD is used for logging into your VPN account.
TORRENT_USERNAME and TORRENT_PASSWORD is used for setting up your torrent client with a secure login.
You will need to logout and log back in for the environmental variables to take effect. If that does not work you have to reboot.
If the Plex claim token is not added during initial configuration you will need to use ssh tunneling to gain access and setup the server for first run. During the first run you setup the server to make it available and configurable. However, this setup option will only be triggered if you access it over http://localhost:32400/web, it will not be triggered if you access it over http://ip_of_server:32400/web. If you are setting up Plex Media Server (PMS) on a headless server, you can use a SSH tunnel to link http://localhost:32400/web (on your current computer) to http://localhost:32400/web (on the headless server running PMS):
ssh <username>@<ip_of_server> -L 32400:<ip_of_server>:32400 -N