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Watchtower

Introduction

Watchtower is an application which you can use to monitor new image releases and to restart container when they are updated.
I only enabled the notification capability hence I have commented out many options in the example Docker Compose file.
I am planning to use another application to automate updating Docker containers.
In my Docker Compose I have added my Gotify notifaction to get mobile notifications about Docker image updates.

Deploying

  1. Navigate to your Portainer instance
  2. Select your environment and navigate to Stacks
  3. Click on Add stack
  4. Give the stack a name select the Web editor as build method
  5. Paste the Docker Compose configuration in the Web editor
    Watchtower Config
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    services:
  watchtower:
    image: "containrrr/watchtower:latest"
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/Amsterdam
      # remove old images after update (useful for saving space)
      - WATCHTOWER_CLEANUP=false
      # the below will ignore labels set. It is worth checking out labels as that can be a more scalabe solution (automatic)
      # - WATCHTOWER_DISABLE_CONTAINERS=traefik crowdsec bouncer-traefik deconz frigate home-assistant homeassistant-db
      # the docker host can also be remote by specifying tcp
      #- DOCKER_HOST=tcp://192.168.1.229:8006
      # how frequently to check for images (default is 24 hours)
      # - WATCHTOWER_POLL_INTERVAL=86400
      # choose whether to restart the containers after updates
      - WATCHTOWER_INCLUDE_RESTARTING=true
      # choose whether to update stopped and exited containers
      - WATCHTOWER_INCLUDE_STOPPED=false
      # this will start containers that were stopped or exited if they are updated
      - WATCHTOWER_REVIVE_STOPPED=true
      # Watchtower only notifies
      - WATCHTOWER_MONITOR_ONLY=true
      # you can tell watchtower to do updates and restarts one by one - can be helpful
      # - WATCHTOWER_ROLLING_RESTART=true #

      # Gotify notifications
      - WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATIONS=gotify
      - WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_GOTIFY_URL=https://gotify.yourdomain.com
      - WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_GOTIFY_TOKEN=GENERATED GOTIFY TOKEN
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
  6. Then click on Deploy stack

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