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Campfire

Stack

Business Apps

Campfire - 37signals' free, open-source group chat: rooms, direct messages, file sharing, full-text search, @mentions, sounds, and Web Push. It was the first ONCE app (a one-time paid product) and is now MIT-licensed and free.

Image details

Architecture: amd64, arm64
Image size: 333 MB
User: basecamp

Source details

Repo: basecamp/once-campfire
Stars: 5k
Forks: 795
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
Latest: v1.4.9 · 1 month ago
Updated: 1 day ago
Website: once.com/campfire

Configuration

Type
Compose
Platform
linux
Image
ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire:sha-df5ed25
Ports
5000:5000
Volumes
/rails/storage : storage
Env vars
HTTP_PORT=5000DISABLE_SSL=trueSECRET_KEY_BASE=${SECRET_KEY_BASE}VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY=${VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY:-}VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY=${VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY:-}SENTRY_DSN=${SENTRY_DSN:-}
Restart
unless-stopped
Source
Repo

Template by deployable-sh·Source

Report issue

Standalone Install

Select an install method, to see config/commands for deploying Campfire

Installation method

Install on Portainer

Import all app templates into your Portainer instance, for easy 1-click deploys

  1. Ensure both Docker and Portainer are installed, and up-to-date
  2. Log into your Portainer web UI
  3. Under Settings → App Templates, paste the below URL
  4. Head to Home → App Templates, and the list of apps will show up
  5. Select Campfire, fill in any config options, and hit Deploy

Template Import URL

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Lissy93/portainer-templates/main/templates.json
Show Me demo
Original stackfile

The compose file this template deploys, straight from its repo:

name: campfire

services:
  campfire:
    image: ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire:sha-df5ed25
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      HTTP_PORT: "5000"
      DISABLE_SSL: "true"
      SECRET_KEY_BASE: ${SECRET_KEY_BASE}
      VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY: ${VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY:-}
      VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY: ${VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY:-}
      SENTRY_DSN: ${SENTRY_DSN:-}
    ports:
      - "5000:5000"
    volumes:
      - storage:/rails/storage

volumes:
  storage:

Or deploy it directly from the source:

git clone https://github.com/deployable-sh/stacks
cd stacks
docker compose -f campfire/compose.yaml up -d

More install options in our documentation, or see basecamp/once-campfire for app-specific guidance.

Campfire

Campfire is a web-based chat application. It supports many of the features you'd expect, including:
  • Multiple rooms, with access controls
  • Direct messages
  • File attachments with previews
  • Search
  • Notifications (via Web Push)
  • @mentions
  • API, with support for bot integrations

Running your own Campfire instance

Campfire's Docker image contains everything needed for a fully-functional, single-machine deployment. This includes the web app, background jobs, caching, file serving, and SSL. You can use our pre-built image at ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire:latest, or build your own from this repo.

Deploying with ONCE

The easiest way to self-host Campfire is with ONCE. It will guide you through the initial set up and then keep your instance up to date automatically.
If you don't already have once installed, run this on the machine you want to run Campfire on:
curl https://get.once.com | sh

once will launch as soon as the install is finished.
Choose Campfire from the list of applications, follow the instructions, and ONCE will take care of the rest.
If you prefer the command line to the dashboard, you can deploy directly:
once deploy ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire --host chat.example.com

Deploying with Docker

If you'd rather run the Docker image yourself, you can read more about that in the self-hosting guide.
!TIP When you start Campfire for the first time, you'll be guided through a wizard to create an admin account. The email address that you enter for the admin account will be visible on the sign-in page, it's there so that people have someone to contact if they need help with their account. If that bothers you, put in any email address you want and create yourself a new admin account.

Development

You are welcome - and encouraged - to modify Campfire to your liking. Please see our development guide for how to get Campfire set up for local development.

Security

See SECURITY.md for how to report a vulnerability and a description of our trust model.

Serve Campfire on your own domain behind Caddy, Nginx or Traefik. Fill in your domain and copy the result. It's a starting point, some apps need their own base URL or extra headers set too.

Proxying campfire.example.com to http://campfire:5000

Add this to your Caddyfile

campfire.example.com {
	reverse_proxy http://campfire:5000
}

Check the logs first

Nine times out of ten the logs tell you exactly what went wrong.

  • In Portainer, go to Containers, click the container, then Logs. Or run docker logs <container>
  • Exit codes help too: 137 means killed, usually out of memory. 126 or 127 means the command inside the image is broken.

Port already in use

If deployment fails with "Bind for 0.0.0.0:5000 failed: port is already allocated", something else on your server is using that port.

  • Find what's using it: sudo ss -tlnp | grep :5000
  • Stop the other service, or pick a different host port. In 5000:5000 only the left number is yours to change, the right one belongs to the app.

Running but the page won't load

The container is up but nothing appears in your browser.

  • Use your server's real IP: http://your-server-ip:5000. The 0.0.0.0 link Portainer shows isn't a real address.
  • Give it a minute after first deploy, campfire can take a while to initialise.
  • Make sure your firewall allows the port, e.g. sudo ufw allow 5000

Image won't pull

Test the pull directly on the host: docker pull ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire:sha-df5ed25

  • "manifest unknown" means the tag no longer exists.
  • "toomanyrequests" is the Docker Hub rate limit. Log in with docker login to raise it.
  • "no space left on device" means a full disk. Reclaim space with docker system prune

"exec format error"

This means the image was built for a different CPU architecture than your server.

  • This image supports: amd64, arm64
  • Check yours with uname -m: x86_64 is amd64, aarch64 is arm64. Raspberry Pi and other ARM boards are the usual culprits.

Container keeps restarting

The unless-stopped restart policy relaunches the app after every crash, so the real error can scroll past.

  • Check the logs right after a restart, the last few lines before it died are the useful ones.
  • Get the exit code with docker inspect <container> --format '{{.State.ExitCode}}'
  • Still stuck? Redeploy once with the restart policy set to no so the failure stays visible.

Stack won't deploy

Compose stacks fail fast on small mistakes, and Portainer shows the reason just above the editor.

  • YAML only accepts spaces for indentation, a single tab breaks the whole file.

Raise an issue

Found something which isn't working as it should? Here's how to report it.

A Compose stack

Campfire is a Compose stack, a set of containers defined in one file and brought up together by Portainer, then started and stopped as a single app.

The app image

An image is the app packed up ready to go, everything Campfire needs bundled into one download. This template pulls ghcr.io/basecamp/once-campfire:sha-df5ed25, which Docker fetches once (about 333 MB) and then starts your own copy from.

Where the image comes from

Docker pulls its images from registries, public libraries of ready-built apps. Campfire's comes from the GitHub Container Registry, published by basecamp.

Version tags

The bit after the colon in the image name is the version tag. This one pins sha-df5ed25, so every redeploy gives you that exact build until you bump it yourself.

Which machines it runs on

Every image is built for particular CPU types. This one ships for amd64, arm64, so it runs on both regular x86 servers and ARM boards like a Raspberry Pi.

Ports

A port is the door the app answers on. A mapping like 5000:5000 means it's reachable on port 5000 of your server, where the left number is yours to change and the right one belongs to the app. It opens:

  • 5000:5000

Volumes

A volume is where Campfire keeps its files so they survive an update or a restart. Without one, anything it saves would sit inside the container and vanish the moment it's recreated. This template mounts:

  • /rails/storage kept in the storage volume Docker manages

Environment variables

Environment variables are the settings you hand over when you deploy, things like a password or a timezone. Campfire takes 6 of them, all with defaults you can leave alone or tweak:

  • HTTP_PORT, defaults to 5000
  • DISABLE_SSL, defaults to true
  • SECRET_KEY_BASE, pulled from your own environment. Rails secret - a long random string.
  • VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY, pulled from your own environment. Optional: Web Push (browser/mobile notifications).
  • VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY, pulled from your own environment
  • SENTRY_DSN, pulled from your own environment. Optional: error reporting.

Restart policy

The restart policy here is unless-stopped, so Docker restarts Campfire after a crash or reboot, but leaves it off when you stop it on purpose. You can change this on the deploy screen. The choices are no (never restart), on-failure (only after a crash), unless-stopped (restart unless you stop it), and always (bring it back no matter what).

Networking

Nothing custom is set, so Campfire sits on Docker's default bridge network: its own private space that reaches the outside world only through the ports it publishes.

Container name

Once it's deployed, Portainer names the container campfire. That's what you'll spot in the containers list and use in commands like docker logs campfire.

Platform

The platform is linux, the kind of system the container is built to run on. Docker and Portainer handle this on a normal Linux server.

Open source license

Campfire is open source, released under the MIT license. In plain terms the code is out in the open, so you're free to run it and change it to fit what you need.

Portainer app templates

Zooming out, this whole page comes from a Portainer app template: a short recipe telling Portainer how to set Campfire up. Add the template list to Portainer once, then deploying Campfire is a click rather than a wall of config.