this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
56 points (98.3% liked)

Selfhosted

44512 readers
763 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz
56
[OC] mag37/dockcheck - CLI tool to automate docker image updates. (github.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by mag37@lemmy.ml to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

dockcheck is simple CLI tool to simplify keeping track of and updating your containers. Selective semi/fully auto updates, notifications on new versions and much more.

Another 6 months have passed and a bunch of updates have been made. The most recent ones are multi-threaded/asynchronous checks to greatly increase speed, notifications on new dockcheck release for those who run scheduled unattended checks, osx and bsd compatibility changes, prometheus exporter to push stats to eg. Grafana and more.

I'm happy to see the project still being used and improved by its users as I thought other great tools (dockge, wud, watchtower and others) would replace it.

As it's been a while I'll try to list the features:

  • Checks all your containers for new updates, without pulling.
  • Manually select which containers or choose all.
  • Either run it to auto update all, or not update any and just list results.
  • Tie it to notify you on new updates.
    • Templates: Synology DSM, mSMTP, Apprise, ntfy.sh , Gotify , Pushbullet , Telegram , Matrix, Pushover , Discord.
    • Enrich with urls to container release notes.
  • Optionally export metrics to Prometheus to show how many images got updates available in a graph.
  • Other misc options as:
    • Use labels to only update containers with label set.
    • Use a N days old option to only update images that have been stable release N days.
    • Auto prune dangling images.
    • Include stopped containers.
    • Exclude specific containers.

I've got to thank this community for contributing with donations, ideas, surfacing issues, testing and PRs. It's a joy!

top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] geography082@lemm.ee 2 points 8 hours ago

Great work !

[–] suicidaleggroll@lemm.ee 4 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

This is a great tool, thanks for the continued support.

Personally, I don't actually use dockcheck to perform updates, I only use it for its update check functionality, along with a custom plugin which, in cooperation with a python script of mine, serves a REST API that lists all containers on all of my systems with available updates. That then gets pulled into homepage using their custom API function to make something like this: https://imgur.com/a/tAaJ6xf

So at a glance I can see any containers that have updates available, then I can hop into Dockge to actually apply them on my own schedule.

[–] Kuvwert@lemm.ee 2 points 12 hours ago

Neat!

[–] mag37@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 hours ago

Thank you! Oh! That's pretty cool, do you mind sharing bits of how this is done? Would be nice to incorporate into a notify-template in the future.

[–] HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Curious how this compares to Watchtower.

[–] mag37@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 hours ago

It's a different approach. This project started as a proof of concept - just to show that it's possible to check for updates without pulling the whole image first (which is how Watchtower does it).

Then it evolved to orchestrate granular automatic updates with a bunch of extra functionality - while still adhering to the core goal of keeping it simple and lightweight.

[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 2 points 22 hours ago

I'm happy with [dockge] (https://github.com/louislam/dockge) for now but thanks! If I ever decide to go full auto update, I'll check this out.

[–] trueheresy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This looks great. Thanks so much for your work on this and sharing with us.

What in your opinion sets your software apart from the other options you mention?

I have recently setup dockers for plex, immich, nextcloud and paperlessngx but have yet to look at longterm maintenence inc. things like auto updates (I know to avoid on immich).

As someone who prob knows the options inside and out - would you recommend your option to this relative newbie or do you think one of the other options might be a better place to start?

[–] mag37@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Thank you!

I sadly don't have too much insights in the other alternatives, I try to not compare too much - maybe I should study them a bit more to understand the wider picture. There's a few more I forgot to mention; renovate and dependabot.

While I think all those tools are great and have functionality that my project cant fulfill - I strive to keep dockcheck simple and lightweight. Options and functionality have been bolted on bit by bit while still trying to have it as simple as possible in its core functions - so a user could just download the main script dockcheck.sh and run it to list updates and optionally update. Everything else is optional, extras.

I guess it depends on what you're looking for. If you'd like a GUI or more in depth setup or reporting - I'd look elsewhere, but if you'd like simplicity and maybe schedule it to notify you when there's updates available - my project may be the thing.

So my answer would be yes: if you're running docker compose this project is very newbie friendly and easy to get going!

[–] trueheresy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 23 hours ago

Thanks so much for the reply, I'll give it a download to play with it - I certainly am a big fan of simple!