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Self-host Lightdash using docker compose

This guide will give you a minimal Lightdash instance running on your local machine. It will not be accessible from the internet, but it will be accessible from your local machine. This is a great way to get started with Lightdash for a proof-of-concept without needing access to kubernetes.

Prerequisites​

1. Clone the Lightdash repository​

Clone the Lightdash code to your local machine. This will create a new directory called ./lightdash (the Lightdash directory).

# Clone the Lightdash repo
git clone https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash
cd lightdash

2. Update your ENV config​

Edit all the ENV variables in .env to match your setup, eg:

PGHOST=db
PGPORT=5432
PGUSER=pg_user *OR* machine username if no prior postgres set up
PGPASSWORD=pg_password *OR* blank if no prior postgres set up
PGDATABASE=postgres
DBT_DEMO_DIR=/*path*/*to*/lightdash/project/examples/full-jaffle-shop-demo

3. Create containers​

You must set the following two environment variables:

  • PGPASSWORD is the password used for the internal postgres database
  • LIGHTDASH_SECRET is the secret used to encrypt data at rest in the database. If you lose this secret, you will not be able to access your data in Lightdash.

export LIGHTDASH_SECRET="not very secret"
export PGPASSWORD="password"

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml --env-file .env up --detach --remove-orphans
info

If you have a Windows machine and get the error Error response from daemon: i/o timeout. Go to Docker > Settings > General and enable the option Expose daemon on tcp://localhost:2375 without TLS