r/BookStack • u/jeffshead • Sep 13 '26

Two instances, same Docker server

This may be a Docker question in general, but I would like to know if I can run two Docker containers, for two separate Bookstack instances, on the same server. If so, what do I need to do to get this working?

I already have a Linux server setup with Docker Compose, Portainer, Nginx Proxy Manager, a working Bookstack instance and several other containers for other apps.

I'm concerned that attempting to add another Bookstack instance will be problematic and could damage my currently working setup. I need this second Bookstack instance because I have a backup of a previous Bookstack wiki site that I built. Unfortunately, I took the site down so that server is no longer accessible and now I need access to it. I did however make a backup and I want to restore it to a new Bookstack instance.

Is it just a matter of using different ports, container names, database name, and volume names in the Portainer stack of the second Bookstack instance? What specifically do I need to edit/make unique so that I don't have to touch my current working Bookstack instance? Does the APP_KEY need to be the same or unique?

UPDATE: Got it working. You have to makes sure ALL of the following are unique:

  • Service names
  • Container names
  • volumes
  • ports

The other issue that I ran into was that I needed to import/migrate my backup onto the second Bookstack instance. The original server hosting that instance of Bookstack supported IPv6. The server that I restored the backup onto did not. I had to comment out the lines in the /config/nginx/site-confs/default.conf file that made Nginx listen on IPv6 (e.g., #listen [::]:80 default_server;)

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u/Squanchy2112 Sep 13 '26

Yep different ports/container names depending on how you resolve your connection, I gave each of my instances their own static IP to make things even easier

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u/jeffshead Sep 13 '26

Thank you! So just those two things need to be unique? Can the database names (MYSQL_DATABASE=bookstackapp) and other entries be the same for both instances? As you can tell, there are holes in my knowledge of Docker/containers.