Traccar Docker Compose files

Docker Compose files to spin up an instance of Traccar.

How to run

Add a COMPOSE_ENV file and save its location as a shell variable along with the location where this repo lives, here for example /opt/containers/traccar plus all other variables. At env/fqdn_context.env.example you'll find an example environment file.

When everything's ready start Traccar with Docker Compose, otherwise head down to Initial setup first.

Environment

export COMPOSE_DIR='/opt/containers/traccar'
export COMPOSE_CTX='ux_vilnius'
export COMPOSE_PROJECT='traccar-'"${COMPOSE_CTX}"
export COMPOSE_FILE="${COMPOSE_DIR}"'/compose.yaml'
export COMPOSE_ENV=<add accordingly>

Context

On your deployment machine create the necessary Docker context to connect to and control the Docker daemon on whatever target host you'll be using, for example:

docker context create fully.qualified.domain.name --docker 'host=ssh://root@fully.qualified.domain.name'

Pull

Pull both Traccar and MySQL:

docker  --project-name "${COMPOSE_PROJECT}" --file "${COMPOSE_FILE}" --env-file "${COMPOSE_ENV}" --profile 'full' pull

Copy to target

Copy images to target Docker host, that is assuming you deploy to a machine that itself has no network route to reach Docker Hub. Copying in its simplest form involves a local docker save and a remote docker load. Consider the helper mini-project quico.space/Quico/copy-docker where copy-docker.sh allows the following workflow:

images="$(docker compose --project-name "${COMPOSE_PROJECT}" --file "${COMPOSE_FILE}" --env-file "${COMPOSE_ENV}" --profile 'full' config | grep -Pi -- 'image:' | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq)"
while IFS= read -u 10 -r image; do
    copy-docker "${image}" fully.qualified.domain.name
done 10<<<"${images}"

Start and clean up

docker --context 'fully.qualified.domain.name' compose --project-name "${COMPOSE_PROJECT}" --file "${COMPOSE_FILE}" --env-file "${COMPOSE_ENV}" --profile 'full' up --detach
docker --context 'fully.qualified.domain.name' system prune -af
docker system prune -af

Initial setup

We're assuming you run Docker Compose workloads with ZFS-based bind mounts. ZFS management, creating a zpool and setting adequate properties for its datasets is out of scope of this document.

Datasets

Create ZFS datasets and set permissions as needed.

• Parent dateset

  export "$(grep -Pi -- '^CONTEXT=' "${COMPOSE_ENV}")"
  zfs create -o canmount=off zpool/data/opt
  zfs create -o mountpoint=/opt/docker-data zpool/data/opt/docker-data
  

• Container-specific datasets

  zfs create -p 'zpool/docker-data/traccar-'"${CONTEXT}"'/traccar/data'
  zfs create -p 'zpool/docker-data/traccar-'"${CONTEXT}"'/traccar/config'
  zfs create -p 'zpool/docker-data/traccar-'"${CONTEXT}"'/mysql/data'
  zfs create -p 'zpool/docker-data/traccar-'"${CONTEXT}"'/mysql/config'
  

• Create subdirs

  mkdir -p '/opt/docker-data/traccar-'"${CONTEXT}"'/'{'traccar/data/'{'data','logs'},'mysql/config/'{'docker-entrypoint-initdb.d','db'}}
  

  This will create a directory structure like so:

  traccar-loft/
  ├── mysql
  │   ├── config
  │   │   ├── db
  │   │   └── docker-entrypoint-initdb.d
  │   └── data
  └── traccar
      ├── config
      └── data
          ├── data
          └── logs
  

• Change ownership for MySQL daemon

  chown -R 999:999 '/opt/docker-data/traccar-'"${CONTEXT}"'/mysql/'*
  

Additional files

Place both a my.cnf and traccar.xml file on target server. Use the directory structure at build-context as a guide, specifically at docker-data.

build-context/
├── mysql
│   └── docker-data
│       └── config
│           └── db
│               └── my.cnf
└── traccar
    └── docker-data
        └── config
            └── traccar.xml

The example my.cnf config file for MySQL follows Traccar's recommendation for MySQL but uses 512 MiB of RAM instead of Traccar's 3 GiB example. Since we live in a world with MySQL 8.0.30+ we're using innodb_redo_log_capacity over Traccar's recommendation (as of Wednesday, March 5, 2025) of innodb_log_file_size. See also MySQL 8.0 docs section "Configuring Redo Log Capacity (MySQL 8.0.30 or Higher)".

In docker-entrypoint-initdb.d you can store database initialization scripts that are run when you start MySQL without any data. See also MySQL 9.2 docs section "Running Additional Initialization Scripts".

Config traccar.xml is a minimal working example file taken from the Traccar Docker image. See Docker Hub traccar/traccar overview section "Get default traccar.xml". In our example traccar.xml file the default H2 database is replaced with MySQL to match this repo.

When done head back up to How to run.