• Docker Desktop (Mac or Windows) or Docker Engine on Linux
• Docker Compose (included with Docker Desktop on Mac and Windows)
• OPTIONAL A DHIS2 database .sql or .sql.gz dump compatible with the version of DHIS2 you will be installing (such as the Sierra Leone demo db)

First, seed the database with some dummy data (optional):

> ./scripts/seed.sh <path/to/seedfile.sql.gz>

Note that once the server is up and running you will need to export Analytics Tables in the Data Administration app. This must be run as a system user and can take some time to complete.

Once the containers have been built and the database seeded you can start the cluster:

> ./scripts/start.sh

(it may take a couple minutes for the Java server to initialize)

Once started, the services should automatically restart if Docker or the host machine are restarted.

You can stop the services manually:

> ./scripts/stop.sh

Or destroy the Docker images and all database data (which is stored in a Docker-managed volume on the host system):

> ./scripts/clean.sh

By default, start.sh will pull the image amcgee/dhis2-core:dev-alpine from Docker Hub. You can specify a custom image tag (though not a custom image at this time) with the environment variable DHIS2_CORE_TAG, for example:

> DHIS2_CORE_TAG=2.31-rc1-alpine ./scripts/start.sh

By default, start.sh will expose the DHIS2 Core instance at port 8080. This can be customized with the environment variable DHIS2_CORE_PORT, for example:

> DHIS2_CORE_PORT=8888 ./scripts/start.sh

These environment variables can also be specified int the .env file

It is possible to run multiple instances of the DHIS2 backend cluster on the same machine. Since docker-compose uses the name of the directory as the project namespace for a cluster, it is currently necessary to keep separate copies of the dhis2-backend repo with different directory names, such as backend and backend-231rc1. With this setup and using the environment variables above to select a core version tag and specify non-conflicting ports it is possibel to run multiple versions of the backend simultaneously.

The DHIS2_home directory on the core container is mapped to the directory ./config/DHIS2_home, so you can put configuration there as well as view DHIS2 system logs. This directory is NOT deleted when running clean.sh. The dhis.conf file is required to exist and by default has the following contents (note the database connection parameters):

connection.dialect = org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect
connection.driver_class = org.postgresql.Driver
connection.url = jdbc:postgresql://db/dhis2
connection.username = dhis
connection.password = dhis
# Database schema behavior, can be validate, update, create, create-drop
connection.schema = update

encryption.password = xxxx
metadata.audit.persist = on

Once the container is running:

• Your DHIS2 instance will be accessible at localhost:8080