How to deploy the Restya Kanban board in minutes with Docker

Jack Wallen walks you through the process of deploying Restya with Docker so you can start using Kanban boards in minutes.

I love a good Kanban board. Whether you go with a third-party host or host the boards yourself, there are tons of options available. Given my penchant for Linux, I tend to aim for open source solutions whenever possible.

Restyaboard is one such open source option for anyone looking to deploy an easy-to-use, feature-rich Kanban platform. Restyaboard includes everything you’ll need for a Kanban solution, such as multiple books, drag and drop, list copy, attachments, archive, private and public boards, filters, deadlines, built-in calendar, labels, iCal feed and custom board backgrounds. I show you how you can get Restya deployed in minutes with the help of Docker.

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What you’ll need

You’ll need an operating system that supports Docker. I’ll be demonstrating on Ubuntu Server 22.04, but you can deploy from any Linux distribution as well as macOS and Windows.

How to install the latest version of Docker CE

In case you don’t already have Docker installed, let me walk you through the process. You’ll need to modify these instructions to fit the operating system you’re working with.

First, we need to add the official Docker GPG key with:

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg

Now, we can add the repository with the command:

echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Install a few dependencies with:

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release -y

Finally, we can install the latest version of the Docker engine (community edition version) with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io -y

Add your user to the Docker group with:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

How to deploy Restya with Docker

First, we’ll download the Resya docker-compose.yml file with:

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RestyaPlatform/board/dev/docker-compose.prod.yml -o docker-compose.yml

You can open that file with:

nano docker-compose.yml

In that file, you can change RELAYHOST to your public IP and the default port (which is 1234) to whatever you need. If you make any changes, save and close the file.

Before we deploy Restya, we must first launch a database container with the command:

docker run -d --rm --name postfix -e "ALLOW_EMPTY_SENDER_DOMAINS=true" -p 1587:587 boky/postfix

When that completes, deploy Restya with:

docker-compose up -d

It’ll take a minute or so for the deployment to complete. After it finishes, you’ll need to give the container a minute or so to come up.

How to access Restya

Open a web browser and point it to http://SERVER:1234, where SERVER is the IP address of the hosting server. If you changed the default port, make sure that is reflected in the address.

You’ll be greeted by the Restya login window (Figure A).

Figure A

The default username is admin and the password is restya. Upon successful login, you’ll find yourself in the Restya main window (Figure B), where you can create your first Kanban board.

Figure B

Congratulations, you’ve just deployed a powerful, user-friendly Kanban board in minutes with the help of Docker.

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