traccar/README.md

# 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](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](#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}"'/docker-compose.yml'
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 compose --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](https://quico.space/Quico/copy-docker) where [copy-docker.sh](https://quico.space/Quico/copy-docker/src/branch/main/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](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](build-context/mysql/docker-data/config/db/my.cnf) config file for MySQL follows [Traccar's recommendation for MySQL](https://www.traccar.org/mysql-optimization/) 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)"](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/innodb-redo-log.html#innodb-modifying-redo-log-capacity).

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"](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/9.2/en/docker-mysql-more-topics.html#docker-additional-init).

Config `traccar.xml` is a minimal working example file taken from the Traccar Docker image. See [Docker Hub traccar/traccar overview](https://hub.docker.com/r/traccar/traccar) section "Get default traccar.xml". In [our example traccar.xml](build-context/traccar/docker-data/config/traccar.xml) file the default H2 database is replaced with MySQL to match this repo.

When done head back up to [How to run](#how-to-run).