• Kartoza docker-geoserver
  • Getting the image
    • Pulling from Dockerhub
    • Building the image
    • Local build using repository checkout
    • Building with a specific version of Tomcat
    • Building on Windows
  • Environment Variables
    • Default installed extensions
      • Activate stable extensions during contain startup
      • Activate community extensions during contain startup
    • Using sample data
    • Enable disk quota storage in PostgreSQL backend
      • Using SSL and Default PostgreSQL ssl certificates (kartoza/postgis backend)
      • Using SSL certificates signed by a certificate authority (kartoza/postgis backend)
    • Activating JNDI PostgreSQL connector
    • Running under SSL
    • Proxy Base URL
    • Removing Tomcat extras
    • Upgrading image to use a specific version
    • Installing extra fonts
    • Other Environment variables supported
    • Control flow properties
    • Changing GeoServer password and username
      • Docker secrets
    • Changing GeoServer deployment context-root
  • Mounting Configs
    • CORS Support
  • Clustering using JMS Plugin
  • Running the Image
    • Run (automated using docker-compose)
    • Reverse Proxy using NGINX
  • Kubernetes (Helm Charts)
  • Contributing to the image
    • Upgrading GeoServer Versions
      • Upgrade extensions files
      • Run upgrade helper script
  • Support
  • Credits

• A simple docker container that runs GeoServer influenced by this docker recipe.
• The image has environment variables that allow users to configure GeoServer based on running-in-production
• The image uses kartoza/postgis as a database backend. You can use any other PostgreSQL image out there but make sure you adjust the environment variables accordingly.

There are various ways to get the image onto your system:

• Pulling from Dockerhub
• Local build using docker-compose

The preferred way (but using the most bandwidth for the initial image) is to get our docker-trusted build like this:

VERSION=2.25.0
docker pull kartoza/geoserver:$VERSION

Note Although the images are tagged and backed by unit tests it is recommended to use tagged versions with dates i.e. kartoza/geoserver:$VERSION--v2024.03.31.The first date available from dockerhub would be the first version for that series. Successive builds that fix issues tend to override the tagged images and also produce dated images.

To build yourself with a local checkout using the docker-compose-build.yml:

1. Clone the GitHub repository:

   git clone https://github.com/kartoza/docker-geoserver

2. Edit the build arguments in the .env file:

3. Build the container and spin up the services

   cd docker-geoserver
   docker-compose -f docker-compose-build.yml up -d geoserver-prod --build

To build using a specific tagged release of the tomcat image set the IMAGE_VERSION build arg: See the dockerhub tomcat for available tags.

VERSION=2.25.0
IMAGE_VERSION=9.0.85-jdk17-temurin-focal
docker build --build-arg IMAGE_VERSION=${IMAGE_VERSION} --build-arg GS_VERSION=${VERSION} -t kartoza/geoserver:${VERSION} .

For some recent builds, it is necessary to set the JAVA_PATH as well (e.g. Apache Tomcat/9.0.36)

docker build --build-arg IMAGE_VERSION=9-jdk11-openjdk-slim --build-arg JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/openjdk-11/bin/java --build-arg GS_VERSION=2.25.0 -t kartoza/geoserver:2.25.0 .

Note: Please check the GeoServer documentation to see which Tomcat versions are supported.

We currently build the image using tomcat:9.0.73-jdk11-temurin-focal because libgdal-java is no longer being built and support in base images > focal will not have the java bindings for the GDAL plugin.

These instructions detail the recommended process for reliably building this on Windows.

Prerequisites - You will need to have this software preinstalled on the system being used to build the Geoserver image:

• Docker Desktop with WSL2
• Java JDK
• Conda
• GDAL (Install with Conda)

Add the conda-forge channel to your conda installation:

conda config --add channels conda-forge

Now create a new conda environment with GDAL, installed from conda. Ensure that this environment is active when running the docker build, e.g.

conda create -n geoserver-build -c conda-forge python gdal
conda activate geoserver-build

Modify the .env with the appropriate environment variables. It is recommended that short paths (without whitespace) are used with forward slashes to prevent errors. You can get the current Java command short path with PowerShell:

(New-Object -ComObject Scripting.FileSystemObject).GetFile((get-command java).Source).ShortPath

Running the above command should yield a path similar to C:/PROGRA~1/Java/JDK-15~1.2/bin/java.exe, which can be assigned to JAVA_HOME in the environment configuration file.

Then run the docker build commands. If you encounter issues, you may want to ensure that you try to build the image without the cache and then run docker up separately:

docker-compose -f docker-compose-build.yml build --force-rm --no-cache
docker-compose -f docker-compose-build.yml up -d

A full list of environment variables are specified in the .env file

The image ships with the following stable extensions:

• vectortiles-plugin
• wps-plugin
• printing-plugin
• libjpeg-turbo-plugin
• control-flow-plugin
• pyramid-plugin
• gdal-plugin
• monitor-plugin
• inspire-plugin
• csw-plugin

These extensions are automatically activated on container start.

The environment variable STABLE_EXTENSIONS can be used to activate extensions listed as stable_plugins

Example

ie VERSION=2.25.0
docker run -d -p 8600:8080 --name geoserver -e STABLE_EXTENSIONS=charts-plugin,db2-plugin kartoza/geoserver:${VERSION}

You can pass any comma-separated extensions as defined in the text file stable_plugins

Note If the extension you are looking for is not listed in stable_plugins.txt but is available on the GeoServer list you can still pass it as an environment variable and it will be downloaded on container startup. This might delay GeoServer startup depending on your bandwidth speed.

The environment variable COMMUNITY_EXTENSIONS can be used to activate extensions listed in community_plugins.txt

Example

ie VERSION=2.25.0
docker run -d -p 8600:8080 --name geoserver -e COMMUNITY_EXTENSIONS=gwc-sqlite-plugin,ogr-datastore-plugin kartoza/geoserver:${VERSION}

The image ships with extension zip files pre-downloaded. You can pass an additional environment variable FORCE_DOWNLOAD_COMMUNITY_EXTENSIONS=true to download the latest community extensions during the initialisation of the container.

Note: If you experience an issue running community extensions please check upstream before reporting the issue here. If an extension is no longer available you can build the extensions following the guidelines from GeoServer develop guidelines

Geoserver ships with sample data which can be used by users to familiarize them with software. This is not activated by default. You can activate it using the environment variable SAMPLE_DATA=true

ie VERSION=2.25.0
docker run -d -p 8600:8080 --name geoserver -e SAMPLE_DATA=true kartoza/geoserver:${VERSION}

GeoServer defaults to using HSQL datastore for configuring disk quota. You can alternatively use a PostgreSQL backend as a disk quota store.

You will need to run a PostgreSQL DB and link it to a GeoServer instance.

If you want to test it locally with docker-compose postgres db you need to specify these env variables:

DB_BACKEND=POSTGRES               
HOST=db                          
POSTGRES_PORT=5432                
POSTGRES_DB=gwc                   
POSTGRES_USER=${POSTGRES_USER}    
POSTGRES_PASS=${POSTGRES_PASS}    
SSL_MODE=allow                    
POSTGRES_SCHEMA=public           
DISK_QUOTA_SIZE=5 

When the environment variable FORCE_SSL=TRUE is set for the database container you will need to set SSL_MODE=allow in the GeoServer container.

When the environment variable FORCE_SSL=TRUE is set for the database container you will need to set SSL_MODE to either verify-full or verify-ca for the GeoServer container. You will also need to mount the SSL certificates you have done in the DB.

In the GeoServer container, the certificates need to be mounted to the folder specified by the certificate directory ${CERT_DIR}

SSL_CERT_FILE=/etc/certs/fullchain.pem
SSL_KEY_FILE=/etc/certs/privkey.pem
SSL_CA_FILE=/etc/certs/root.crt

When defining vector stores you can use the JNDI pooling. To set this up you will need to activate the following environment variable POSTGRES_JNDI=TRUE. By default, the environment the variable is set to FALSE. Additionally, you will need to define parameters to connect to an existing PostgreSQL database

POSTGRES_JNDI=TRUE
HOST=${POSTGRES_HOSTNAME}
POSTGRES_DB=${POSTGRES_DB}
POSTGRES_USER=${POSTGRES_USER}
POSTGRES_PASS=${POSTGRES_PASS}

When defining the parameters for the store in GeoServer you will need to set jndiReferenceName=java:comp/env/jdbc/postgres

You can use the environment variables to specify whether you want to run the GeoServer under SSL. Credits to letsencrpt for providing the solution to run under SSL.

If you set the environment variable SSL=true but do not provide the pem files (fullchain.pem and privkey.pem) the container will generate self-signed SSL certificates.

ie VERSION=2.25.0
docker run -it --name geoserver  -e PKCS12_PASSWORD=geoserver -e JKS_KEY_PASSWORD=geoserver -e JKS_STORE_PASSWORD=geoserver -e SSL=true -p 8443:8443 -p 8600:8080 kartoza/geoserver:${VERSION}

If you already have your perm files (fullchain.pem and privkey.pem) you can mount the directory containing your keys as:

ie VERSION=2.25.0
docker run -it --name geo -v /etc/certs:/etc/certs  -e PKCS12_PASSWORD=geoserver -e JKS_KEY_PASSWORD=geoserver -e JKS_STORE_PASSWORD=geoserver -e SSL=true -p 8443:8443 -p 8600:8080 kartoza/geoserver:${VERSION}

You can also use a PFX file with this image. Rename your PFX file as certificate.pfx and then mount the folder containing your pfx file. This will be converted to perm files.

Note When using PFX files make sure that the ALIAS_KEY you specify as an environment variable matches the ALIAS_KEY that was used when generating your PFX key.

A full list of SSL variables is provided in SSL Settings

For the server to report a full proxy base URL, you need to pass the following env variable i.e.

HTTP_PROXY_NAME
HTTP_PROXY_PORT

If you are running GeoServer under SSL with reverse proxy i.e. nginx you will need to set the following env variables

Example below:

HTTP_PROXY_NAME=foo.org
HTTP_SCHEME=https

This will prevent the login form from sending insecure http post requests as experienced in login issue

For SSL-based connections the env variables are:

HTTPS_PROXY_NAME
HTTPS_PROXY_PORT
HTTPS_SCHEME

To include Tomcat extras including docs, examples, and the manager web app, set the TOMCAT_EXTRAS environment variable to true:

Note: If TOMCAT_EXTRAS is set to true then you should configure TOMCAT_PASSWORD to use a strong password otherwise a randomly generated password is used.

ie VERSION=2.25.0
docker run -it --name geoserver  -e TOMCAT_EXTRAS=true -p 8600:8080 kartoza/geoserver:${VERSION}

Note: If TOMCAT_EXTRAS is set to false, requests to the root webapp ("/") will return HTTP status code 404. To issue a redirect to the GeoServer webapp ("/geoserver/web") set ROOT_WEBAPP_REDIRECT=true

If you are migrating your GeoServer instance, from one to a lower version to a higher and do not need to update your master password, you will need to set the variable EXISTING_DATA_DIR.

You can set the env variable EXISTING_DATA_DIR to any value i.e. EXISTING_DATA_DIR=foo or EXISTING_DATA_DIR=false When the environment variable is set it will ensure that the password initialization is skipped during the startup procedure.

If you have downloaded extra fonts you can mount the folder to the path /opt/fonts. This will ensure that all the .ttf files are copied to the correct path during initialisation.

ie VERSION=2.25.0
docker run -v fonts:/opt/fonts -p 8080:8080 -t kartoza/geoserver:${VERSION}

You can find a full list of environment variables in Generic Env variables

Note The list below is not exhaustive of all values available. Always consult the .env file to check possible values.

• GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR=PATH
• ENABLE_JSONP=true or false
• MAX_FILTER_RULES=Any integer
• OPTIMIZE_LINE_WIDTH=false or true
• FOOTPRINTS_DATA_DIR=PATH
• GEOWEBCACHE_CACHE_DIR=PATH
• GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=password
• GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER=username
• GEOSERVER_FILEBROWSER_HIDEFS=false or true
• XFRAME_OPTIONS="true" - Based on Xframe-options
• INITIAL_MEMORY=size : Initial Memory that Java can allocate, default 2G
• MAXIMUM_MEMORY=size : Maximum Memory that Java can allocate, default 4G

The control flow module manages requests in GeoServer. Instructions on what each parameter means can be read from documentation.

The following env variables can be set

REQUEST_TIMEOUT=60
PARALLEL_REQUEST=100
GETMAP=10
REQUEST_EXCEL=4
SINGLE_USER=6
GWC_REQUEST=16
WPS_REQUEST=1000/d;30s

You can pass the environment variables to change it on runtime.

GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD
GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER

The username and password are reinitialized each time the container starts. If you do not pass the env variables GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD the container will generate a new password which is visible in the startup logs.

Note: When upgrading the GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD and GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER you will need to mount the volume settings:/settings so that the lock-files generated by the update_password.sh are persistent during initialization. See the example in docker-compose-build

docker run --name "geoserver" -e GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER=kartoza  -e GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=myawesomegeoserver -p 8080:8080 -d -t kartoza/geoserver

Note: The docker-compose recipe uses the password myawesomegeoserver. It is highly recommended not to run the container in production using these values.

To avoid passing sensitive information in environment variables, _FILE can be appended to some variables to read from files present in the container. This is particularly useful in conjunction with Docker secrets, as passwords can be loaded from /run/secrets/<secret_name> e.g.:

• -e GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/<geoserver_pass_secret>

For more information see https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/secrets/.

Currently, the following environment variables

 GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER
 GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD
 S3_USERNAME
 S3_PASSWORD
 TOMCAT_USER
 TOMCAT_PASSWORD
 PKCS12_PASSWORD
 JKS_KEY_PASSWORD
 JKS_STORE_PASSWORD

are supported.

You can pass the environment variable to change the context-root at runtime, example:

GEOSERVER_CONTEXT_ROOT=my-geoserver

The example above will deploy Geoserver at https://host/my-geoserver instead of the default location at https://host/geoserver.

It is also possible to do a nested context-root. Apache Tomcat nested context-roots are specified via #.

GEOSERVER_CONTEXT_ROOT=foo#my-geoserver

The example above will deploy Geoserver at https://host/foo/my-geoserver instead of the default location at https://host/geoserver.

This variable is meant for runtime only. At build-time, do not change this value so at runtime it can perform the proper context-root rename.

You can mount the config file to the path /settings. These configs will be used in favour of the defaults that are available from the Build data directory

The configs that can be mounted are

• cluster.properties
• controlflow.properties
• embedded-broker.properties
• geowebcache-diskquota-jdbc.xml
• s3.properties
• tomcat-users.xml
• web.xml - for tomcat cors
• epsg.properties - for custom GeoServer EPSG values
• server.xml - for tomcat configurations
• broker.xml
• users.xml - for Geoserver users.
• roles.xml - To define roles users should have in GeoServer

Example

 docker run --name "geoserver" -e GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER=kartoza  -v /data/controlflow.properties:/settings/controlflow.properties -p 8080:8080 -d -t kartoza/geoserver

Note: The files users.xml and roles.xml should be mounted together to prevent errors during container start. Mounting these two files will overwrite GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD and GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER

You can additionally run some bash script to correct some missing dependencies i.e. in community extension like cluster issue

-v ./run.sh:/docker-entrypoint-geoserver.d/run.sh

The image ships with CORS support. If you however need to modify the web.xml you can mount web.xml to /settings/ directory.

GeoServer supports clustering using JMS cluster plugin or using the ActiveMQ-broker.

You can read more about how to set up clustering in kartoza clustering

We provide a sample docker-compose.yml file that illustrates how you can establish a GeoServer + PostGIS.

If you are interested in the backups, add a section in the docker-compose.yml following instructions from docker-pg-backup.

Start the services using:

docker-compose up -d

Note The username and password are specified in the .env file. It is recommended to change them into something more secure. If you do not pass the env GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD the container generates a random string which will be your password. This is visible from the startup logs.

Once all the services start, test by visiting the GeoServer landing page in your browser: http://localhost:8600/geoserver.

You can also put Nginx in front of GeoServer to receive the http request and translate it to uwsgi.

A sample docker-compose-nginx.yml is provided for running GeoServer and Nginx

docker-compose -f docker-compose-nginx.yml  up -d

Once the services are running GeoServer will be available from

http://localhost/geoserver/web/

You can run the image in Kubernetes following the recipe

We welcome users who want to contribute enriching this service. We follow the git principles and all pull requests should be against the develop branch so that we can test them and when we are happy we push them to the master branch.

GeoServer releases and bug fixes are done frequently. We provide a helper script upgrade_geoserver_version.sh which can be run to update the respective files which mention the GeoServer version. To upgrade to a new version involves two steps:

1. Upgrade text files stable_plugins.txt and community_plugins.txt as new versions usually have extensions promoted/demoted from community/stable extensions.
2. Run the upgrade script that updates some env variables.

In the build_data directory, two helper files are provided that generate a list of extensions for stable_plugins.txt and community_plugins.txt. Before running these scripts you need to install the following Python packages

    pip3 install beautifulsoup4
    pip3 install requests

Then execute the scripts as below:

For community extensions run the command below:

    cd ./build_data
    python3 community_plugins.py 2.23.x

For stable extensions run the command below:

cd ./build_data
python3 stable_plugins.py 2.25.0 https://sourceforge.net/projects/geoserver/files/GeoServer
    

/bin/bash upgrade_geoserver_version.sh ${GS_VERSION} ${GS_NEW_VERSION}

Note: The script will also push these changes to the current repo, and it is up to the individual running the script to push the changes to his specific branch of choice and then complete the pull request

When reporting issues especially related to installed extensions (community and stable) please refer to the GeoServer Issue page to see if there are no issues reported there. We rely on the GeoServer community to resolve upstream issues. For urgent upstream problems, you will need to get paid support from the developers in GeoServer.

Other platforms where users can ask questions and get assistance are listed below:

• Stack Exchange
• GeoServer Mailing lists
• GeoServer Commercial Support

If you require more substantial assistance from kartoza (because our work and interaction on docker-geoserver is pro bono), please consider taking out a Support Level Agreeement

• Tim Sutton (tim@kartoza.com)
• Shane St Clair (shane@axiomdatascience.com)
• Alex Leith (alexgleith@gmail.com)
• Admire Nyakudya (addloe@gmail.com)
• Gavin Fleming (gavin@kartoza.com)