runtimeterror/content/posts/silverbullet-self-hosted-knowledge-management/index.md

title	date	draft	description	featured	toc	reply	categories	tags
SilverBullet: A Brilliant Self-Hosted Knowledge Management Web App	2024-08-12	true	This is a new post about...	false	true	true	Self-Hosting	cloudflare containers docker javascript linux selfhosting tailscale

A few days ago I posted on my other blog about trying out SilverBullet, an open-source self-hosted web-based note-keeping app. SilverBullet has continued to impress me as I use it and learn more about its features. It really fits my multi-device use case much better than Obsidian ever did (even with its paid sync plugin).

In that post, I shared a brief overview of how I set up SilverBullet:

I deployed my instance in Docker alongside both a Tailscale sidecar and Cloudflare Tunnel sidecar. This setup lets me easily access/edit/manage my notes from any device I own by just pointing a browser at https://silverbullet.tailnet-name.ts.net/. And I can also hit it from any other device by using the public Cloudflare endpoint which is further protected by an email-based TOTP challenge. Either way, I don't have to worry about installing a bloated app or managing a complicated sync setup. Just log in and write.

This post will go into a bit more detail about the configuration.

Docker Prep

I chose to deploy SilverBullet on an Ubuntu 22.04 VM in my homelab which was already set up for serving Docker workloads so I'm not going to cover the Docker installation process here. I tend to run my Docker workloads out of /opt/ so I started this journey by creating a place to hold the SilverBullet setup:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/silverbullet # [tl! .cmd]

I set up appropriate ownership of the folder and then entered it:

sudo chown john:docker /opt/silverbullet # [tl! .cmd:1]
cd /opt/silverbullet

Docker Compose

services:
  tailscale:
    image: tailscale/tailscale:latest
    container_name: silverbullet-tailscale
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      TS_AUTHKEY: ${TS_AUTHKEY:?err}
      TS_HOSTNAME: ${TS_HOSTNAME:-ts-docker}
      TS_EXTRA_ARGS: ${TS_EXTRA_ARGS:-}
      TS_STATE_DIR: /var/lib/tailscale/
      TS_SERVE_CONFIG: /config/serve-config.json
    volumes:
      - ./ts_data:/var/lib/tailscale/
      - ./serve-config.json:/config/serve-config.json

  cloudflared:
    image: cloudflare/cloudflared
    restart: unless-stopped
    container_name: silverbullet-cloudflared
    command:
      - tunnel
      - run
      - --token
      - ${CLOUDFLARED_TOKEN}
    network_mode: service:tailscale

  silverbullet:
    image: zefhemel/silverbullet
    container_name: silverbullet
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      SB_USER: "${SB_CREDS}"
    volumes:
      - ./space:/space
    network_mode: service:tailscale

  watchtower:
    image: containrrr/watchtower
    container_name: silverbullet-watchtower
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock