Coolify part 1 : Debian/stable latest 6.11.5 kernel
Introduction
In this post I'm documenting the steps needed to install Coolify on Debian stable/bookworm with the latest 6.11.5 kernel as it has some quirks that needs to be dealt with. However if you're using Debian stable/bookworm with default 6.1 kernel the process should be smoother.
If you're using other Distros, I have no interest on covering them as I only use Debian-based distro. But you'll find plenty of external references on installing Coolify on Ubuntu or Fedora.
Note: the method outlined in the 2 series post works in any VPS. Some popular VPS providers like Herztner and Hostinger claim they support deploying via Coolify out of the box, but looking at some Youtube videos, the step by step are exactly the same with what I did (I'm using no-brand VPS).
Firewall setup
First you need to read my post on VPS security best practices as it provide the foundation of the base setup for your VPS.
Allow ports for installation
Since we locked down our ports in the initial config, we need to open some ports to allow the installation process to succeed.
ufw allow 8000/tcp # http
ufw allow 6001/tcp # websocket
ufw allow 6002/tcp # terminal
ufw allow 22/tcp # SSH
Check status and reload
ufw status
ufw reload
Docker
As mentioned earlier, I'm using Debian stable/bookworm with latest 6.11.5 kernel which requires manual Docker installation as a workaround to error in Coolify install script. Skip this part if you're on Debian stable/bookworm and using the default 6.1 kernel, you might not need this section.
Set up Docker's apt repository
# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg \
-o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
"deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) \
signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] \
https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update
Install the Docker packages
Once we've added Docker's apt sources, we can move forward to actually installing Docker.
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli \
containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin \
docker-compose-plugin
Verify installation
docker ps
Output:
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
Coolify
Is an open-source & self-hostable Heroku / Netlify / Vercel alternative.
TLDR: yeah, Coolify is quite extensive!
Installation
Now we can continue to Coolify installation since we have successfully installed Docker.
curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash
The installation could take a while (several minutes) so please wait and be patient!
Output:
Your instance is ready to use.
Please visit http://ip_address:8000 to get started.
Open the url
Paste the url to the web browser.
If everything's correct, you'll see Coolify registration page!
--> Proceed with the registration.