Host for free on Fly.io

[ganigeorgiev]

This was requested several times in #498, #432, #328 and others.

Note 1: There will be an official Docker image when PocketBase reach a more stable release
Note 2: I didn't spend too much time exploring all Fly.io configurations so maybe there is a better/easier way to do it.
Note 3: Fly.io has a 60s timeout for idle connections, so you may get periodically errors in the console when using the realtime service. You can ignore them, since the SDK handles the reconnect automatically (#642).

1. Create the PocketBase Dockerfile:

FROM alpine:latest

ARG PB_VERSION=0.19.0

RUN apk add --no-cache \
    unzip \
    ca-certificates \
    # this is needed only if you want to use scp to copy later your pb_data locally
    openssh

# download and unzip PocketBase
ADD https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/download/v${PB_VERSION}/pocketbase_${PB_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip /tmp/pb.zip
RUN unzip /tmp/pb.zip -d /pb/

# uncomment to copy the local pb_migrations dir into the container
# COPY ./pb_migrations /pb/pb_migrations

# uncomment to copy the local pb_hooks dir into the container
# COPY ./pb_hooks /pb/pb_hooks

EXPOSE 8080

# start PocketBase
CMD ["/pb/pocketbase", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8080"]

2. Install Flyctl

Follow the installation instructions from https://fly.io/docs/hands-on/install-flyctl/.

Run flyctl auth signup to create a Fly.io account (email or GitHub).

Run flyctl auth login to login.

The above commands will open a browser window to authenticate with your Fly account.
If you see a screen saying to enter your billing details you can ignore it (as of now Fly has both free and paid regions; more on that see below).

3. Launch (aka. machine setup)

Navigate to the directory where the Dockerfile from 1) was created.

Run flyctl launch --build-only (optionally you can specify --dockerfile if you are running from different directory).

This will prompt you a question in the terminal like:

We're about to launch your app on Fly.io. Here's what you're getting:

Organization: ABC                    (fly launch defaults to the personal org)
Name:         flydemo                (derived from your directory name)
Region:       Frankfurt, Germany     (this is the fastest region for you)
App Machines: shared-cpu-1x, 1GB RAM (most apps need about 1GB of RAM)
Postgres:     <none>                 (not requested)
Redis:        <none>                 (not requested)

? Do you want to tweak these settings before proceeding? y/N

Type y to adjust the settings to the free allowance. This will open the following page:

In the above page you need to change 2 mandatory things to enable the free plan:

• Change the "Region" to one that is NOT marked with asterisk (*).
• Change the "VM memory" to 256MB or 512MB depending on your free alowance (see Free allowance).

Click on the "Confirm Settings" button at the bottom and after this a fly.toml configuration file will be created in your working directory.

4. Create and mount 1GB free persistent volume

Run flyctl volumes create pb_data --size=1.

You may get a warning like:

Warning! Every volume is pinned to a specific physical host. You should create two or more volumes per application to avoid downtime. Learn more at https://fly.io/docs/reference/volumes/
? Do you still want to use the volumes feature? y/N

Type y to confirm.

And then it should prompt you to select a region - preferably choose the same region as in 3).

Once finished, open your fly.toml and add somewhere at the root level the following mounts config:

[mounts]
  destination = "/pb/pb_data"
  source = "pb_data"

Your final fly.toml should look something like this:

# fly.toml app configuration file generated for snowy-tree-8913 on 2023-07-28T20:49:19+03:00
#
# See https://fly.io/docs/reference/configuration/ for information about how to use this file.
#

app = "snowy-tree-8913"
primary_region = "ams"

[mounts]
  source = "pb_data" # name of the volume
  destination = "/pb/pb_data"

# optional if you want to change the PocketBase version
[build.args]
  PB_VERSION="0.19.0"

[http_service]
  internal_port = 8080
  force_https = true
  auto_stop_machines = false
  auto_start_machines = true
  min_machines_running = 1
  processes = ["app"]
  [http_service.concurrency]
    type = "requests"
    soft_limit = 500
    hard_limit = 550

5. Deploy

Run flyctl deploy and that's it!

To access your PocketBase dashboard navigate to https://YOUR_APP_NAME.fly.dev/_/.

To deploy new configuration/image changes, just run flyctl deploy again.

Backup and downloading a copy of your pb_data

Fly.io will even create a daily snapshot automatically for your volume (it will be kept for 5 days) - https://fly.io/docs/reference/volumes/#snapshots-and-restores.

To download a copy of your remote pb_data directory to your local machine, you could run the following commands in 2 separate terminals:

# this will register a ssh key with your local agent (if you haven't already)
flyctl ssh issue --agent

# proxies connections to a fly VM through a Wireguard tunnel
flyctl proxy 10022:22

# run in a separate terminal to copy the pb_data directory
scp -r -P 10022 root@localhost:/pb/pb_data  /your/local/pb_data

[ganigeorgiev]

For sending emails, the following providers have free options:

• https://www.mailjet.com/

• https://sendgrid.com/

• https://www.sendinblue.com/

• https://www.mailgun.com/

• https://mailtrap.io/ (only for tests/previews)

• and probably others...

[stephenvaz]

I'm trying to use sendinblue as my SMTP mail server for my deployment on fly.io but I'm not able to send a test email through the admin console. I keep getting "Test email send timeout".

The same configuration of the mail server in the pocketbase console works just fine locally.
Already tried ufw allow 587 to open port 587 on the fly container.
Also, used the same dockerfile in the above conversation.

[ganigeorgiev]

@stephenvaz Hm, manually opening outgoing 587 shouldn't be necessary. I've just tested it with mailtrap and it is working fine for me (with the latest PocketBase v0.14.0).

Make sure that the smtp credentials are correct and there are no typos (eg. there are no spaces or extra characters before/after the username and password).

Alternatively, you can try starting PocketBase with --debug (could be added in the Dockerfile CMD) and/or check for server logs in the fly dashboard > "Monitoring".

[stephenvaz]

@ganigeorgiev Thanks, eventually updating to the latest version fixed the issue

[rodydavis]

I ended up using Gmail for sending emails with SMTP settings!

[okabrionz]

i 'am using brevo and it works well. even i still learn how to send it automatically when users pressed register button 😂

[jonafeucht]

Awesome write! This will be an excellent resource for people getting into Pocketbase.

Are you also going to add an entry in the FAQ linking here? I think that would be a good place, instead of people combing through the discussions for a solution.

[Azgaar]

Great! It would you really nice if you can also describe how can we get a data backup. Let's say access pb_data on the volume and copy it to local machine. It looks it can be done, but fly.io description is no that clear.

[gedw99]

You can also ssh in and replace the binary Ayer the first deployment.

[benallfree]

@gedw99 From working on https://pockethost.io I learned that the CPU architecture may be different on the target runtime environment. I think it's a more reliable plan to build the binary in the Dockerfile because then it will build for the correct environment. I'll post a comment showing how I did that.

[ganigeorgiev]

@benallfree This is not related to the backup, but just for clarity go can cross-compile without requiring Docker by setting the GOOS and GOARCH env variables (and disabling CGO if enabled), eg:

# creating a mac build from linux
env GOOS=darwin GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=0 go build

[benallfree]

@ganigeorgiev Yes sorry my comment was for @gedw99 about replacing binaries. I thought a cross-compile would work too, have you tested that? I wasn't able to get it working that way, but I was able to get it working by building in Docker.

[ganigeorgiev]

@benallfree

I thought a cross-compile would work too, have you tested that?

Yes, this is how the PocketBase releases are generated - https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/blob/master/.goreleaser.yaml#L9

[benallfree]

Here's another Docker approach that builds a custom binary as part of fly deploy.

Note: In theory, you should be able to cross-compile (#537 (reply in thread)) but if you don't know the target architecture or don't want to worry about it changing, this solution will work.

1. Create a custom PocketBase build:

./pocketbase-custom
   go.mod
   pocketbase.go

// ./pocketbase.go

package main

import (
	"log"

	"github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase"
)

func main() {
    app := pocketbase.New()

    if err := app.Start(); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

// ./go.mod
module pocketbase

2 Create the Dockerfile:

FROM alpine:latest

RUN apk add -v build-base
RUN apk add -v go 
RUN apk add -v ca-certificates
RUN apk add --no-cache \
    unzip \
    # this is needed only if you want to use scp to copy later your pb_data locally
    openssh

# Copy your custom PocketBase and build
COPY ./pocketbase-custom /pb
WORKDIR /pb

# Note: This will pull the latest version of pocketbase. If you are just doing 
# simple customizations and don't have a local build environment for Go, 
# leave this line in. 
# For more complex builds that include other dependencies, remove this 
# line and rely on the go.sum lockfile.
RUN go get github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase

RUN go build
WORKDIR /

EXPOSE 8080

# start PocketBase
CMD ["/pb/pocketbase", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8080"]

Let me know what you think! Tested and working on fly.io.

[ganigeorgiev]

nitpick: ARG PB_VERSION=0.7.4 will not have effect here because the PocketBase version will be always determined by the go get call (you can append to the package the tag if you want to specify a version, but usually go.sum should be part of version control and it's better to be defined there if you have custom build)

[benallfree]

I caught that, thank you. Yeah, if you have a go.sum already then the go get line can and probably should be removed. The approach using go get will work for very basic extensions like custom API routes and hook event listeners, but if you start pulling in dependencies then you'll definitely want to lock it down by building locally to create a go.sum.

Edit: updated Dockerfile with this note

[TylerSustare]

@benallfree This is a great little setup! I'm currently stuck adding litestream to my Dockerfile, using pocketbase as a framework like you are. Do you have any ideas how to do so? I added this issue to @bscott's solution.

[benallfree]

Sorry @TylerSustare I haven’t messed with it yet but please post your results here, I’m sure many would be interested in the enhanced Docker setup.

[TylerSustare]

Deploy with Litestream with PocketBase as a Framework

I just finished an example repo here https://github.com/TylerSustare/pocketbase-framework-litestream

The biggest difference is using the Dockerfile to launch litestream with our custom Go binary as the sub process.

[gedw99]

Nice - will try this out this weekend

[benallfree]

This seems really cool. One thing I noticed is that you hardcoded the download URL. Is there a reliable way to determine the architecture under which Docker will be running and select the appropriate lightstream download?

[TylerSustare]

Oh that's a great question. The base image from golang:1.x will always be this architecture AFAIK. If you were to use a different base image it could be a different litestream download.

As for the answer to your actual question. We could run another script that would do it for us in a shell environment and download based on that. But I haven't investigated it. If you wanted to that would be awesome though!

[gedw99]

With fly workers you can turn the Pocketbase into Serverless if you use fly.io.

There is a way to also do this on GCP Cloud Run also using volumes also.

So if the app has no users then it shuts down ( which is configurable ). When a new request comes through it starts is back up in about half a second by simple rebooting the fire tacket instance and remounting the volume.

Blog and example code here:
https://wundergraph.com/blog/wunderbase_serverless_graphql_database_on_top_of_sqlite_firecracker_and_prisma

It would be great to combine Serverless with S3 backup / restore but no one has gotten that far yet

[benallfree]

Hi @gedw99 I read the tutorial but I'm having trouble understanding how to get PocketBase set up as you described. Would you be able to post a PocketBase-specific tutorial showing how to get PocketBase running on fly.io in a configuration where it goes to sleep when not in use?

If you can do that, I'd be happy to add it to awesome-pocketbase.

[Zantonius]

Thanks for this guide!

When i ran:
flyctl volumes create pb_data --size=1, i had to add --region=ams to the end, just writing it here in case anyone else runs into the same need :)

[ganigeorgiev]

The flyctl volumes create command would usually show a prompt in the console and you can pick the region from there (similar to when you first ran flyctl launch).

[Zantonius]

For me it didn't for some reason, so I just wanted to add the above information so that others that run into the same issue can find an solution easily.

[benallfree]

For anyone still following this, I added a reference to this discussion at https://github.com/benallfree/awesome-pocketbase. I think it would be great to maybe start adding Dockerfiles to awesome-pocketbase, perhaps that could be a centralized place where various configurations could live.

[fjaviermoradiaz]

Hi,

Thanks for this solution, but I'm trying to add my pb_data to Dockerfile without results. This is my Dockerfile

FROM alpine:latest

ARG PB_VERSION=0.7.6

RUN apk add --no-cache \
    unzip \
    # this is needed only if you want to use scp to copy later your pb_data locally
    openssh

# download and unzip PocketBase
ADD https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/download/v${PB_VERSION}/pocketbase_${PB_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip /tmp/pb.zip
RUN unzip /tmp/pb.zip -d /pb/
ADD ./pb_data /pb/pb_data


EXPOSE 8080

# start PocketBase
CMD ["/pb/pocketbase", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8080"]

I just add

ADD ./pb_data /pb/pb_data

I've pb_data local directory in same Dockerfile directory, but when app is deployed, always show installer view.

[ganigeorgiev]

In that case you can deploy your application with a clean state and scp your local pb_data to the remote, similar to the "Backup and downloading" section in the first post, but with reverse scp arguments order, something like (I haven't tested it):

# this will register a ssh key with your local agent (if you haven't already)
flyctl ssh issue --agent

# proxies connections to a fly VM through a Wireguard tunnel
flyctl proxy 10022:22

# run in a separate terminal to copy your pb_data directory
scp -r -P 10022 /your/local/pb_data root@localhost:/pb/pb_data

[denisgurev]

I also wanted to copy my local data to the production but instead of scp I'm using rsync and it works fine for me.

[fjaviermoradiaz]

this works, data is uploaded fine, but when I try to access always appear installer view

Y fill user data with same user from local and appear message that confirm this user already exist, then I try to access to login view https://app/_/#/login but always redirect to installer view

[ganigeorgiev]

@fjaviermoradiaz Hm, that's strange. Maybe the application is keeping an old file descriptor of the initial database file, aka. hasn't acknowledged the new db file. Try restarting your vm with flyctl restart [APPNAME] and it should be able to pick the changes.

[fjaviermoradiaz]

Thanks @ganigeorgiev, now works fine!!! after restart I've can access to login page

Thank you so much!

[rajesh6161]

Are there any other option besides fly.io because it needs credit card, and being student I don't have at all. @benallfree

[ganigeorgiev]

@TechStudent10 As mentioned previously, it is possible that fly.io has changed their requirements or has geo-restricted the region you are using.

[TechStudent10]

@TechStudent10 As mentioned previously, it is possible that fly.io has changed their requirements or has geo-restricted the region you are using.

Yes I posted the comment after quickly skimming through. I've checked again and am now using MoGenius to host.

[vicontiveros00]

@TechStudent10 @rajesh6161 As long as you're using volumes under 1GB it won't charge you anything. You're required to provide payment information when you set up a fly.io account for verification (to avoid bots and crypto dudes). Been using it for a while with a bunch of other stuff I have hosted and I've never been charged even a penny.

[rajesh6161]

@TechStudent10 As mentioned previously, it is possible that fly.io has changed their requirements or has geo-restricted the region you are using.

Yes I posted the comment after quickly skimming through. I've checked again and am now using MoGenius to host.

How did you hosted on Mogenius? can you help me out?

[TechStudent10]

@TechStudent10 As mentioned previously, it is possible that fly.io has changed their requirements or has geo-restricted the region you are using.

Yes I posted the comment after quickly skimming through. I've checked again and am now using MoGenius to host.

How did you hosted on Mogenius? can you help me out?

I didn't. Im using PocketHost now

[ktitaro]

Hi, thanks for this helpful guide ✌️ I just want to add that now you can download your database using fly CLI. You can find more information here: https://fly.io/docs/flyctl/ssh-sftp-get/. To use this feature, navigate to your project's folder, where your fly.toml is located. Then if you want to download a single file, you can use fly ssh sftp get <file-name>. I didn't find a way to download a folder using this command, but you can always use fly ssh sftp shell to start an interactive SFTP session, where you can manually select the file / folder to download by navigating your server file system.

[mgrami]

Hi. I can not use fly.io because of credit card. I'm trying to use render.com free web service but it fails. I don't know what's the problem. I just create a github repo with dockerfile and connected to render website. The logs says docker image is built and points to urls for admin & api s but above in dashboard says failed.

[ganigeorgiev]

@mgrami By a quick glance at their documentation, they seem to have persistent storage (Disks), so it should be possible to host PocketBase with render but I haven't tried it yet. Sometime later this week I'll consider testing it.

In the meantime, please open a new Q&A discussion with more details about your Dockerfile, the steps you've executed and the available logs.

[ganigeorgiev]

@mgrami The Render free plans doesn't support persistent storage, so it is not possible to host PocketBase for free on Render. For this and other limitations you can check https://render.com/docs/free#other-limitations.

[babakfp]

I hosted this just right now on render.com and things work fine http://angle-berry.vercel.app. There is no errors in the logs and the site is able to use PocketBase to get and send data. This "The Render free plans doesn't support persistent storage" is still true, however it's not an issue for me.

[Brunowilliang]

is there any tutorial for deploying on railway?

[ganigeorgiev]

No and I don't think it is possible to host on railway because, at least the last time I checked, they don't have persistent storage. You can also check #923.

[Brunowilliang]

@ganigeorgiev I managed to implement it in fly.io, but I couldn't change the url :/ do you know how to change it?

[ganigeorgiev]

@Brunowilliang No sorry, I've never used fly.io with custom domain and I'm not sure what are necessary steps, but you could try to follow their official docs - https://fly.io/docs/app-guides/custom-domains-with-fly/ and/or ask in their support forum.

[Brunowilliang]

@ganigeorgiev ok, i'll try this, you guys are awesome <3

[vicontiveros00]

What if you already have a large database locally?? How can you get that onto fly.io?

[vicontiveros00]

I've gotten the stfp thing to work on a different windows machine. Only this is how can I put my local pb_data to the VM? It says the file already exists and doesn't let me put? I'm limited to only cd, ls, get, put, and chmod.

[ganigeorgiev]

@vicontiveros00 I haven't use the sftp approach so I'm not sure if there is a better way, but you can temporary rename your local file (eg. data_new.db) and later you can ssh in your vm and replace/rename it back to data.db.

Alternatively, if you managed to fix the ssh issue, rsync (or scp with directoy arg) allow overwriting the destination file during upload. But note that you'll have to restart the vm (flyctl restart) since the application will hold a file descriptor to the old file until the process is terminated.

[vicontiveros00]

Do you know of any alternatives to Fly.io? Idc if it's paid at this point I'm so frustrated doesn't seem fly cares to support Windows very well.

[ganigeorgiev]

@vicontiveros00 Free services that offer vms with persistent storage are rare and I haven't really tested other options. Several users suggested https://mogenius.com/ and https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/ but I haven't got the time to test them yet. You can also have a look at @benallfree's PocketHost https://pockethost.io/ (https://github.com/benallfree/pockethost).

[vicontiveros00]

Figured out how to do it, I'll mention this for any future Windows users that might run into this problem. If you run fly ssh console you're given more commands to work with so you can go ahead and navigate to pb_data and rm data.db (Be careful, this is assuming you don't need the data on the VM anymore.) Then, run fly ssh sftp shell and you can then go ahead and write your local data to the VM normally 👍

[creekdrops]

If anyone here is using an M1 Mac for their development, and running into issues with deployment, this is the workaround I managed to find.

# authenticate docker
flyctl auth docker

# build and tag with docker
docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64 -t registry.fly.io/your-app:tag 

# push to your app's repo in the fly registry
docker push registry.fly.io/your-app:tag

# deploy the image you just pushed
flyctl deploy -i registry.fly.io/your-app:tag

[Jeffreyon]

Thanks chief

…

On Sat, 11 Mar 2023, 8:48 am Isaac, ***@***.***> wrote: Ok, so using fly.io you just need to follow the steps from this tutorial and create two different fly.toml files, and assign a different app name. I renamed they as fly.dev.toml and fly.prod.toml. Then you just need to call the deploy command (or any other command) with a -c flag pointing out to the config file flyctl deploy -c fly.dev.toml //or flyctl deploy -c fly.prod.toml — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#537 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOLFLSI22PXNJ5SBHEFXW53W3R7BTANCNFSM6AAAAAAQPMDL2M> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.*** com>

[meekscreativelab]

This is how I was able to run my local migrations file on the server to set up my database

# this will register a ssh key with your local agent (if you haven't already)
flyctl ssh issue --agent

# proxies connections to a fly VM through a Wireguard tunnel
flyctl proxy 10022:22

# run in a separate terminal to copy local pb_migrations directory onto server
# might need to remove [localhost]:10022 from ~/.ssh/known_hosts if you get a WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! since the key changes all the time
scp -r -P 10022 pb/pb_migrations root@localhost:/pb/pb_migrations

# in another separate terminal, ssh into machine
fly ssh console

#run migration
/pb/pocketbase migrate up

[ganigeorgiev]

@meekscreativelab You don't have to manually run the migrations. You can just COPY/ADD your local pb_migrations directory in the Dockerfile (it needs to be next to the extracted executable; you can also specify an explicit migrations dir path using the --migrationsDir flag).

[gedw99]

Sorry I don’t understand how this is done in relation to the fly example . Could you give more info / context ?

[pnmcosta]

Hi @ganigeorgiev, this is an excellent guide, I now have my app successfully hosted on Fly.io and deploying in 🚀 time 🎁 !

One thing I've noticed, the request logs User IP turns out to be the same and be a Fly.io one, pretty sure some resolution on the request headers might have to be done.

Is there anyway I can achieve it my end, like rewrite to one to another? It's also being cloudflare proxied (but I get the same with it on/off) so might have to do the same there too.

Many thanks

[ganigeorgiev]

Support for the Fly-Client-IP header is already implemented in the develop branch and will be available with the upcoming v0.16.0 release (most likely next week).

[TheRedSpy15]

Does anyone else get?

 [warn] Instance 6e82d416a59e18 reached hard limit of 25 concurrent connections. This usually indicates your app is not closing connections properly or is not closing them fast enough for the traffic levels it is handling. Scaling resources, number of instances or increasing your hard limit might help.

Or does the connection limit just need increased in the toml?

[ganigeorgiev]

The services.concurrency config limits will have to be adjusted.

Note that there are differences in the behavior between v2 and v1 apps. I haven't got the time to test v2 apps yet, but with the planned benchmarks and testbed repo I'll give them a try and will update the guide accordingly.

[stephanelpaul]

you can host it on railway now https://railway.app/changelog/2023-06-23-volumes-priority-boarding

[necodess]

They no longer have a free tier tho, their free starter plan is going to be replaced by “Hobby” plan

[NoahMLoomis]

https://pockethost.io allows you to host for free (not self-hosted) until they hit version 1.0. From then on, it seems it'll be a pay-as-you-go https://pockethost.io/docs/overview/faq/

[jlopezvaldez]

I also ended up using PocketHost for my app. It was simple and had it running in less than 2 minutes!

[newmizanur]

FAQ response from Pockethost: "Space has been deleted"

[benallfree]

@newmizanur Moved as of v0.9.0 https://pockethost.io/docs/overview/faq/

[maybetejas]

Details

This was requested several times in #498, #432, #328 and others.

Note 1: There will be an official Docker image when PocketBase reach a more stable release Note 2: I didn't spend too much time exploring all Fly.io configurations so maybe there is a better/easier way to do it. Note 3: Fly.io has a 60s timeout for idle connections, so you may get periodically errors in the console when using the realtime service. You can ignore them, since the SDK handles the reconnect automatically (#642).

1. Create the PocketBase Dockerfile:

FROM alpine:latest

ARG PB_VERSION=0.17.0

RUN apk add --no-cache \
    unzip \
    ca-certificates \
    # this is needed only if you want to use scp to copy later your pb_data locally
    openssh

# download and unzip PocketBase
ADD https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/download/v${PB_VERSION}/pocketbase_${PB_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip /tmp/pb.zip
RUN unzip /tmp/pb.zip -d /pb/

# uncomment to copy the local pb_migrations dir into the container
# COPY ./pb_migrations /pb/pb_migrations

# uncomment to copy the local pb_hooks dir into the container
# COPY ./pb_hooks /pb/pb_hooks

EXPOSE 8080

# start PocketBase
CMD ["/pb/pocketbase", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8080"]

2. Install Flyctl

Follow the installation instructions from https://fly.io/docs/hands-on/install-flyctl/.

Run flyctl auth signup to create a Fly.io account (email or GitHub).

Run flyctl auth login to login.

3. Launch (aka. machine setup)

Navigate to the directory where the Dockerfile from 1) was created.

Run flyctl launch (optionally you can specify --dockerfile if you are running from different directory).

This will prompt you a couple questions like the name of your app, deployment region, etc.

Type n for the last 2 questions asking for creating a Postgresql database and whether you want to deploy directly.

? Would you like to set up a Postgresql database now? No

? Would you like to deploy now? No

The launch command will create a fly.toml configuration file in the working directory.

4. Create and mount 1GB free persistent volume

Run flyctl volumes create pb_data --size=1

It will prompt you to select a region - preferably choose the same region as in 3).

Once finished, open fly.toml and add somewhere at the root level the following mounts config:

[mounts]
  destination = "/pb/pb_data"
  source = "pb_data"

Your final fly.toml should look something like this:

# fly.toml app configuration file generated for snowy-tree-8913 on 2023-07-28T20:49:19+03:00
#
# See https://fly.io/docs/reference/configuration/ for information about how to use this file.
#

app = "snowy-tree-8913"
primary_region = "ams"

[mounts]
  source = "pb_data" # name of the volume
  destination = "/pb/pb_data"

# optional if you want to change the PocketBase version
[build.args]
  PB_VERSION="0.17.0"

[http_service]
  internal_port = 8080
  force_https = true
  auto_stop_machines = false
  auto_start_machines = true
  min_machines_running = 1
  processes = ["app"]
  [http_service.concurrency]
    type = "requests"
    soft_limit = 500
    hard_limit = 550

5. Deploy

Run flyctl deploy and that's it!

To access your PocketBase dashboard navigate to https://YOUR_APP_NAME.fly.dev/_/.

To deploy new configuration/image changes, just run flyctl deploy again.

Backup and downloading a copy of your pb_data

Fly.io will even create a daily snapshot automatically for your volume (it will be kept for 5 days) - https://fly.io/docs/reference/volumes/#snapshots-and-restores.

To download a copy of your remote pb_data directory to your local machine, you could run the following commands in 2 separate terminals:

# this will register a ssh key with your local agent (if you haven't already)
flyctl ssh issue --agent

# proxies connections to a fly VM through a Wireguard tunnel
flyctl proxy 10022:22

# run in a separate terminal to copy the pb_data directory
scp -r -P 10022 root@localhost:/pb/pb_data  /your/local/pb_data

I did this, but the things keeps shutting down for some reason, the dashboard shows "deployed" but the pocketbase db just goes down without any reason

[ganigeorgiev]

You can check the Fly Monitoring dashboard to see if there are any messages logged in the web console that could pinpoint the issue, otherwise I'm not sure how to help.

The only thing I can think of that could cause abrubt restarts is probably memory errors (OOM) since the fly VM is limited by default to only 256MB. If that's the case, you can try to:

• Define GOMEMLIMIT=200MiB env variable
• Enable swap.
  As suggested in the above link, to enable it you can try creating a helper docker_cmd.sh shell script:

  # https://fly.io/docs/rails/cookbooks/deploy/#enabling-swap
  fallocate -l 512M /swapfile
  chmod 0600 /swapfile
  mkswap /swapfile
  echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
  swapon /swapfile
  echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory
  
  # run the application
  /pb/pocketbase serve --dir='/pb/pb_data' --http='0.0.0.0:8080'

  and then replace in your Dockerfile the last CMD entrypoint with something like:

  COPY docker_cmd.sh /docker_cmd.sh
  
  CMD /docker_cmd.sh

It could be also some temporary Fly issue, I'm not sure. If you are not able to identify the culprit, you could try submitting a question in the Fly forum.

[pnmcosta]

fyi, cli fly logs -a APPNAME provides more verbose details than the web dashboard, I had an issue with my entrypoint cmd and was only reported on the cli.

[Stuk]

I'm curious what happens during a deploy, especially when a migration is applied? Looks like the default on fly.io is a rolling deploy, where a second instance is spun up alongside the first, then traffic is switched once it's ready.

If there are writes ocuring on the first instance during a migration, what will occur?

[benallfree]

I probably shouldn't be the one to answer, but I believe fly.io has a specific mention about NOT having redundant servers for deployments like pocketbase where persistent storage on volumes is needed because the volume is associated only with one machine permanently.

[silenceofthewans]

I was trying to set up CORS by appending --origins='client.pages.dev' to Dockerfile's CMD but Access-Control-Allow-Origin header wasn't being set on response (docker issue?) but I was able to set it using fly.toml:

[http_service.http_options.response.headers]
    Access-Control-Allow-Origin = "<your-client-url>"

Don't know if this is how it is supposed to be but putting this here in case anyone else runs into this.

[matevarga]

However, be aware that Fly.io only allows 512 bytes of metadata per service and fails silently if it's over 512 b, so if your app suddenly becomes unreachable on Fly.io after changing these options then it might be because of this.

[Stuk]

From my understanding a new instance is created for a deploy. I wonder if that means there is downtime when doing a deploy as the persistent storage is switched between instances. Probably just need to give it a go if no one else has experience!

[benallfree]

I would read the fly.io docs carefully, I don't think volumes can be switched between instances. You might be able to use litestream to synchronize, but I think horizontally scaling pocketbase is very challenging.

[sabikrahat]

Is there anyone who has recently deployed with fly.io version-0.1.127? Or @ganigeorgiev can you please update this resource based on the lastest flyctl v0.1.127. They have updated the whole system. After entering the flyctl launch they are also deploying the backend.
As a result, we can't add

[mounts]
  destination = "/pb/pb_data"
  source = "pb_data" 

in fly.toml file.

[newmizanur]

Huh, that's a big change. I was not aware.

[sabikrahat]

@ganigeorgiev can you please guide us?

[einarpersson]

Maybe I'm blind, but I still don't understand what the (breaking) change is? All I see is some new options for some kind of scaling (auto_extend_*) for volumes

[pnmcosta]

Seems like added feature, not replacement. I have deployed yesterday with CLI v0.1.108 will likely update this week with newer, and will report back if any issues.

[ganigeorgiev]

There doesn't seem to be breaking changes (at least not such that affect the settings in this guide), but there were some changes to the flyctl interactions.

In short try to run flyctl launch --build-only to start the config launcher without auto deploy. I've updated the guide with the latest steps and attached a screenshot of the new launch configuration page.

[flaviocopes]

Anyone knows how to connect to the Fly instance via .internal links? https://fly.io/docs/reference/private-networking/#fly-io-internal-addresses

Same on Railway. Both use IPv4 on external links and IPv6 on internal links

[pnmcosta]

I'm also curious to know, I may have this use case going forward. I think you may need to use a reverse proxy like nginx, but am not 100% sure.

[flaviocopes]

ah interesting idea @pnmcosta got to try

[flaviocopes]

Updating this since I went back to this problem I had, but using Railway. Private network is HTTP-only, and you have to set the internal port too.

So the URL to connect to PocketBase must be something like http://<internal network URL>:<port>

[richardtatum]

@flaviocopes

Did you stick with this? I am having the same issue with Sveltekit and Pocketbase running on separate machines within the same application. I can establish connections between them by using the internal http://app-name.flycast address however when retrieving images the http schema causes multiple-source issues when displaying on an https address.

I can't really work out how to solve this without separating them into two fly.io applications (which I'd prefer not to do for performance reasons)

[KaTaiHo]

My app successfully deployed but when I logged in as admin none of my data was on the remote host.

# pocketbase build
FROM alpine:latest

ARG PB_VERSION=0.20.7

RUN apk add --no-cache \
    unzip \
    ca-certificates \
    openssh

# download and unzip PocketBase
ADD https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/download/v${PB_VERSION}/pocketbase_${PB_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip /tmp/pb.zip
RUN unzip /tmp/pb.zip -d /pb/

COPY ./pb_migrations /pb/pb_migrations

COPY ./pb_data /pb/pb_data

EXPOSE 8090

# start PocketBase
CMD ["/pb/pocketbase", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8090"]

Am I missing anything else? When I run my service via docker locally the data shows up.

[ganigeorgiev]

You pb_data will be overwritten by the mounted volume.
If you want to load your local pb_data into the remote db you can either create a migration(s) or create a backup locally from the Admin UI > Settings > Backup and then import it in the remote instance.

[bogdano]

First of all, all the kudos I have go to Pocketbase-- amazing project.

I've built an app in Go using PB as a framework, and I think the instructions above need to include the additional steps necessary if using PB as a framework. I am not sure what I need to do in order to properly deploy my app-- I followed the instructions but my homepage returns {"code":404,"message":"Not Found.","data":{}}. The admin interface works fine, but it's a blank slate without any of my collections.

I created the volume 'pb_data' on fly.io, and my fly.toml is:

app = 'nps-go'
primary_region = 'sea'

[[mounts]]
  source = 'pb_data'
  destination = '/pb/pb_data'

[build]

[http_service]
  internal_port = 8080
  force_https = true
  auto_stop_machines = true
  auto_start_machines = true
  min_machines_running = 0
  processes = ['app']

[[vm]]
  memory = '512mb'
  cpu_kind = 'shared'
  cpus = 1

My Dockerfile:

FROM alpine:latest

ARG PB_VERSION=0.20.2

RUN apk add --no-cache \
    unzip \
    ca-certificates \
    # this is needed only if you want to use scp to copy later your pb_data locally
    openssh

# download and unzip PocketBase
ADD https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/download/v${PB_VERSION}/pocketbase_${PB_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip /tmp/pb.zip
RUN unzip /tmp/pb.zip -d /pb/

# uncomment to copy the local pb_migrations dir into the container
# COPY ./pb_migrations /pb/pb_migrations

# uncomment to copy the local pb_hooks dir into the container
# COPY ./pb_hooks /pb/pb_hooks

EXPOSE 8080

# start PocketBase
CMD ["/pb/pocketbase", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8080"]

My .dockerignore:

**/.env
**/build-errors.log
fly.toml

And this is my project structure:

.
├── api
│   ├── mapbox_matrix.go
│   └── parks_service.go
├── client
│   └── main.css
├── components
│   ├── base.templ
│   ├── base_templ.go
│   ├── index.templ
│   ├── index_templ.go
│   ├── parks.templ
│   ├── parks_templ.go
│   ├── park.templ
│   └── park_templ.go
├── Dockerfile
├── fly.toml
├── go.mod
├── go.sum
├── main
├── main.go
├── pb_data
│   ├── backups
│   ├── data.db
│   ├── logs.db
│   └── storage
├── pb_public
│   └── tailwind.css
├── README.md
├── tailwind.config.js
├── template
│   └── template.go
└── tmp
    └── build-errors.log

edit: I also have this in main.go:

e.Router.GET("/*", apis.StaticDirectoryHandler(os.DirFS("./pb_public"), false))

[bogdano]

...I'm still kind of stuck. I am using Templ and Tailwind as well. As far as Templ goes, it should be compiled into the Go binary, right? And I am assuming that the Go binary is just called main?

As far as Tailwind goes, it builds the final CSS file into /pb_public/ so I tried to copy it over in the dockerfile:

COPY ./pb_public /pb/pb_public and then changed the static dir handler to e.Router.GET("/*", apis.StaticDirectoryHandler(os.DirFS("/pb/pb_public"), false)), deleted my app and then rebuilt the dockerimage and redeployed with a new .dockerignore which ignores everything except the binary and /pb_public/:

.env
tmp/
components/
pb_data/
api/
template/
main.go
fly.toml
README.md
tailwind.config.js
go.mod
go.sum
.air.toml
.gitignore

...But I still had the same result-- clean slate admin interface with no config, and 404 on the frontend.

[bogdano]

....Alright, I'm almost there. I was, of course, doing the completely wrong thing. Seeing as I am extending Pocketbase with Go, I should have just tried deploying a Go app to fly.io normally, relying on flyctl to create the Dockerfile for me. I had to modify the CMD command, however, from CMD ["run-app"] to CMD ["run-app", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8080"] in order for Pocketbase to know what to do and where to serve it.

ARG GO_VERSION=1
FROM golang:${GO_VERSION}-bookworm as builder

COPY ./pb_public/ ./usr/src/app/pb_public/

WORKDIR /usr/src/app
COPY go.mod go.sum ./
RUN go mod download && go mod verify
COPY . .
RUN go build -v -o /run-app .

FROM debian:bookworm

COPY --from=builder /run-app /usr/local/bin/
CMD ["run-app", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8080"]

I also properly registered my migrations, and now my admin interface shows my database schema.

However, my last remaining problem is serving the static files:

I have a pb_public directory in the project root, next to pb_data, and I am calling it in my main package like so:

e.Router.GET("/*", apis.StaticDirectoryHandler(os.DirFS("./pb_public"), false))

Above, in the Dockerfile, I tried copying the ./pb_public directory over to the app root dir, but my tailwind.css still returns a 404 JSON response...

[pnmcosta]

@bogdano this thread might help #2621

[cemalokten]

I've followed the instructions, updated the versions in the Dockerfile and uncommented the COPY ./pb_migrations /pb/pb_migrations line.

However, when accessing the deployed version, it always presents me with the installer screen. Is there something I'm missing or doing wrong?

Thanks

FROM alpine:latest

ARG PB_VERSION=0.22.11

RUN apk add --no-cache \
    unzip \
    ca-certificates \
    # this is needed only if you want to use scp to copy later your pb_data locally
    openssh

# download and unzip PocketBase
ADD https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/download/v${PB_VERSION}/pocketbase_${PB_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip /tmp/pb.zip
RUN unzip /tmp/pb.zip -d /pb/

# uncomment to copy the local pb_migrations dir into the container
COPY ./pb_migrations /pb/pb_migrations

# uncomment to copy the local pb_hooks dir into the container
# COPY ./pb_hooks /pb/pb_hooks

EXPOSE 8080

# start PocketBase
CMD ["/pb/pocketbase", "serve", "--http=0.0.0.0:8080"]

# fly.toml app configuration file generated for abc on 2024-05-10T07:00:16+01:00
#
# See https://fly.io/docs/reference/configuration/ for information about how to use this file.
#

app = 'abc'
primary_region = 'lhr'

[build]

[http_service]
  internal_port = 8080
  force_https = true
  auto_stop_machines = true
  auto_start_machines = true
  min_machines_running = 0
  processes = ['app']

[[vm]]
  memory = '2gb'
  cpu_kind = 'shared'
  cpus = 1

[ganigeorgiev]

You don't seem to have a persistent volume mounted. See "Step 4" from the initial post.

[cemalokten]

Thank you, that was it.