dashy/docs/getting-started.md

Getting Started

Deploy with Docker

The quickest way to get started on any system is with Docker, and Dashy is available though Docker Hub. You will need Docker installed on your system.

To test it out, just run: docker run -p 8080:80 lissy93/dashy, then open your browser and visit http://localhost:8080.

To configure Dashy with your own services, and customize it to your liking, you will need to write a config file, and pass it to the Docker container as a volume.

docker run -d \
  -p 8080:80 \
  -v /root/my-local-conf.yml:/app/public/conf.yml \
  --name my-dashboard \
  --restart=always \
  lissy93/dashy:latest

Explanation of the above options:

• -d Detached mode (not running in the foreground of your terminal)
• -p The port that should be exposed, and the port it should be mapped to in your host system [host-port][container-port]
• -v Specify volumes, to pass data from your host system to the container, in the format of [host-path]:[container-path]
• --name Give your container a human-readable name
• --restart=always Spin up the container when the daemon starts, or after it has been stopped
• lissy93/dashy:latest This last option is the image the container should be built from

For all available options, and to learn more, see the Docker Run Docs

Deploy from Source

If you do not want to use Docker, you can run Dashy directly on your host system. For this, you will need both git and the latest or LTS version of Node.js installed.

1. Get Code: git clone git@github.com:Lissy93/dashy.git and cd dashy
2. Configuration: Fill in you're settings in ./public/conf.yml
3. Install dependencies: yarn
4. Build: yarn build
5. Run: yarn start

Providing Assets

Although not essential, you will most likely want to provide several assets to Dashy. All web assets can be found in the /public directory.

• ./public/conf.yml - As mentioned, this is your main application config file
• ./public/item-icons - If you're using your own icons, you can choose to store them locally for better load time, and this is the directory to put them in. You can also use sub-folders here to keep things organized. You then reference these assets relative this the direcroties path, for example: to use ./public/item-icons/networking/netdata.png as an icon for one of your links, you would set icon: networking/netdata.png
• Also within ./public you'll find standard website assets, including favicon.ico, manifest.json, robots.txt, etc. There's no need to modify these, but you can do so if you wish.

Basic Commands

Now that you've got Dashy running, there are a few commands that you need to know.

The following commands are defined in the package.json file, and are run with yarn. If you prefer, you can use NPM, just replace instances of yarn with npm run. If you are using Docker, then you will need to precede each command with docker exec -it [container-id], where container ID can be found by running docker ps. For example docker exec -it 26c156c467b4 yarn build

yarn build

In the interest of speed, the application is pre-compiled, this means that the config file is read during build-time, and therefore the app needs to rebuilt for any new changes to take effect. Luckily this is very straight forward. Just run yarn build or docker exec -it [container-id] yarn build.

yarn validate-config

If you have quite a long configuration file, you may wish to check that it's all good to go, before deploying the app. This can be done with yarn validate-config or docker exec -it [container-id] yarn validate-config. Your config file needs to be in /public/conf.yml (or within your Docker container at /app/public/conf.yml). This will first check that your YAML is valid, and then validates it against Dashy's schema.