Home Assistant in a Docker container

I’ve managed to move my current Home Assistant install from a python virtual environment to Docker. This will allow me to upgrade the host operating system or move to a new computer without too much difficulty. The most difficult thing to get working was the networking and it took me a while to work out which containers needed to be on the host network and which could be on the default docker network.

My Docker stack has the following components:

• Mosquitto
• Zigbee2MQTT
• Home Assistant
• NodeRed
• ESPhome
• Lets-encrypt
• My own personal power monitor Perl script
• Watchtower
• MySQL
• phpMyAdmin

Eventually I’ll move my Plex install into the same environment but I’m waiting for me new 8Tb hard drive.

The docker-compose file looks like this:

version: '3.5'
services:
  mosquitto:
    container_name: mqtt
    hostname: mqtt
    image: eclipse-mosquitto
    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 1883:1883
      - 8883:8883
      - 9001:9001
    volumes:
      - /mnt/data/docker/mosquitto/config:/mosquitto/config
      - /mnt/data/docker/mosquitto/data:/mosquitto/data
      - /mnt/data/docker/mosquitto/log:/mosquitto/log
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro

  zigbee2mqtt:
    container_name: zigbee2mqtt
    hostname: zigbee2mqtt
    image: koenkk/zigbee2mqtt:latest
    volumes:
      - /mnt/data/docker/zigbee2mqtt:/app/data
      - /run/udev:/run/udev:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    devices:
      - /dev/ttyACM0:/dev/ttyACM0
    depends_on:
      - mosquitto
    restart: always
    privileged: true
    environment:
      - TZ=Australia/Hobart

  homeassistant:
    container_name: homeassistant
    hostname: homeassistant
    image: homeassistant/home-assistant
    volumes:
      - /mnt/data/docker/homeassistant:/config
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    depends_on:
      - mosquitto
    restart: always
    network_mode: host

  nodered:
    container_name: nodered
    hostname: nodered
    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true
    network_mode: host
    image: nodered/node-red-docker:latest
    ports:
      - 1880:1880
    volumes:
      - /mnt/data/docker/node-red:/data
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    depends_on:
      - mosquitto
      - homeassistant
    restart: always
    environment:
      - TZ=Australia/Hobart

  esphome:
    container_name: esphome
    hostname: esphome
    image: esphome/esphome
    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true
    volumes:
      - /mnt/data/docker/esphome:/config
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    restart: always
    network_mode: host
    
  lets-encrypt:
    container_name: letsencrypt
    hostname: letsencrypt
    image: linuxserver/letsencrypt
    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true
    restart: always
    volumes: 
      - /mnt/data/docker/homeassistant/letsencrypt:/config
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    ports:
      - 433:433
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - EMAIL=chris.jennings@riscy.biz
      - URL=#####
      - VALIDATION=duckdns
      - TZ=Australia/Hobart
      - DUCKDNSTOKEN=#######

  powerlog:
    container_name: powerlog
    hostname: powerlog
    image: powerlog
    restart: always
    privileged: true
    volumes:
      - /mnt/data/docker/powerlog:/usr/src/myapp
      - /run/udev:/run/udev:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    devices:
      - /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0
    links:
      - mysql:mysql
    command: perl /usr/src/myapp/powerlog.pl      

  watchtower:
    container_name: watchtower
    image: containrrr/watchtower
    command: --cleanup --label-enable
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
  mysql:
    container_name: mysql
    hostname: mysql
    image: mysql
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - /mnt/data/docker/mysql:/var/lib/mysql
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro

  phpmyadmin:
    container_name: phpmyadmin
    hostname: phpmyadmin
    image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - /mnt/data/docker/phpmyadmin:/sessions
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    links:
      - mysql:db

I have all the docker mounted volumes in a folder /mnt/data/docker. To migrate MySQL I had to export the data and then import it into the new docker container. Copying the files over didn’t work, maybe it was because the MySQL version was incompatible. Best practice usually requires a mysqldump and import instead of just copying the MySQL files over.

Ensure that host names are set correctly so that containers can talk to each other. I also mounted /etc/localtime on each container to ensure the time is correct. Initially my Perl script was time stamping incorrectly because I didn’t map the time through.