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Meshcentral Meshcentral

Stack

Remote Control

MeshCentral is a full computer management web site. With MeshCentral, you can run your own web server to remotely manage and control computers on a local network or anywhere on the internet.

Configuration

Type
Compose
Platform
linux
Source
Repo

Template by xneo1·Source

Services

meshcentral-mongodb

Configuration

Image
mongo:latest
Volumes
/data/db : /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/database
Restart
always

Image details

Pulls: 4.8B
User: stackbrew
Created: Jun 06, 2014
Updated: 3 days ago
Status: active

meshcentral

Configuration

Image
typhonragewind/meshcentral
Ports
8086:4438087:800
Volumes
/opt/meshcentral/meshcentral-data : /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/data/opt/meshcentral/meshcentral-files : /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/user_files
Env vars
HOSTNAME=my.domain.comREVERSE_PROXY=falseREVERSE_PROXY_TLS_PORT=443IFRAME=falseALLOW_NEW_ACCOUNTS=trueWEBRTC=falseNODE_ENV=production
Restart
always

Image details

Pulls: 4.1M
User: typhonragewind
Created: Jan 28, 2021
Updated: 9 months ago
Status: active

Standalone Install

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

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 Meshcentral, 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:

services:
    meshcentral-mongodb:
        container_name: meshcentral_db
        restart: always
        image: mongo:latest
        expose:
            - 27017
        volumes:
            - /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/database:/data/db
    meshcentral:
        restart: always
        container_name: meshcentral
        depends_on:
            - 'meshcentral-mongodb'
        image: typhonragewind/meshcentral
        ports:
            - 8086:443
            - 8087:800
        environment:
            - HOSTNAME=my.domain.com     #your hostname
            - REVERSE_PROXY=false     #set to your reverse proxy IP if you want to put meshcentral behind a reverse proxy
            - REVERSE_PROXY_TLS_PORT=443
            - IFRAME=false #set to true if you wish to enable iframe support
            - ALLOW_NEW_ACCOUNTS=true    #set to false if you want disable self-service creation of new accounts besides the first (admin)
            - WEBRTC=false  #set to true to enable WebRTC - per documentation it is not officially released with meshcentral, but is solid enough to work with. Use with caution
            - NODE_ENV=production
        volumes:
            - /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/data:/opt/meshcentral/meshcentral-data
            - /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/user_files:/opt/meshcentral/meshcentral-files

Or deploy it directly from the source:

git clone https://github.com/xneo1/portainer_templates
cd portainer_templates
docker compose -f Template/Stack/meshcentral.yml up -d

More install options in our documentation.

Container Documentation

meshcentral-mongodb Documentation

MongoDB document databases provide high availability and easy scalability.

meshcentral Documentation

Dockerized MeshCentral

Serve Meshcentral 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 meshcentral.example.com to https://meshcentral:443

Add this to your Caddyfile

meshcentral.example.com {
	reverse_proxy https://meshcentral:443 {
		transport http {
			tls_insecure_skip_verify
		}
	}
}

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 0.0.0.0:8086 failed: port is already allocated", something else on your server is using that port.

  • Find what's using it: sudo ss -tlnp | grep :8086
  • Stop the other service, or pick a different host port. In 8086:443 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: https://your-server-ip:8086. The 0.0.0.0 link Portainer shows isn't a real address.
  • Give it a minute after first deploy, meshcentral can take a while to initialise.
  • Make sure your firewall allows the port, e.g. sudo ufw allow 8086

Permission denied on volumes

If the logs show "permission denied", the app can't write to its data folder on the host.

  • Fix the ownership: sudo chown -R 1000:1000 /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/database (and the same for the other mapped folders)

Image won't pull

Test the pull directly on the host: docker pull mongo:latest

  • "manifest unknown" means the tag no longer exists. This template uses latest, so try pinning a specific version instead.
  • "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.

  • 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 always 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

Meshcentral is a Compose stack, a set of containers (2 of them) defined in one file and brought up together by Portainer, then started and stopped as a single app.

The services

This stack is built from 2 containers that run side by side. Here's each one, with the image it runs and anything it waits for first:

  • meshcentral-mongodb runs mongo:latest
  • meshcentral runs typhonragewind/meshcentral, starts after meshcentral-mongodb

Ports

A port is the door the app answers on. A mapping like 8086:443 means it's reachable on port 8086 of your server, where the left number is yours to change and the right one belongs to the app. Once it's running, open https://your-server-ip:8086 in a browser. It opens:

  • 8086:443, likely the web interface
  • 8087:800

Volumes

A volume is where Meshcentral 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:

  • /data/db from /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/database on the host
  • /opt/meshcentral/meshcentral-data from /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/data on the host
  • /opt/meshcentral/meshcentral-files from /portainer/Files/AppData/Config/meshcentral/user_files on the host

Environment variables

Environment variables are the settings you hand over when you deploy, things like a password or a timezone. Meshcentral takes 7 of them, all with defaults you can leave alone or tweak:

  • HOSTNAME, defaults to my.domain.com
  • REVERSE_PROXY, defaults to false
  • REVERSE_PROXY_TLS_PORT, defaults to 443
  • IFRAME, defaults to false
  • ALLOW_NEW_ACCOUNTS, defaults to true
  • WEBRTC, defaults to false
  • NODE_ENV, defaults to production

Restart policy

The restart policy here is always, so Docker brings Meshcentral back up after a crash and again when the server reboots. Good for anything you want running around the clock. 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

Portainer puts these services on one shared private network, so they can find each other by name (like meshcentral-mongodb) while only the ports above are open to you.

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.

Portainer app templates

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