README.md 28 KB

Note: this is the "per-architecture" repository for the amd64 builds of the drupal official image -- for more information, see "Architectures other than amd64?" in the official images documentation and "An image's source changed in Git, now what?" in the official images FAQ.

Quick reference

Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

Quick reference (cont.)

What is Drupal?

Drupal is a free and open-source content-management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end framework for at least 2.1% of all Web sites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and government sites including WhiteHouse.gov and data.gov.uk. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal

logo

How to use this image

The basic pattern for starting a drupal instance is:

$ docker run --name some-drupal -d amd64/drupal

If you'd like to be able to access the instance from the host without the container's IP, standard port mappings can be used:

$ docker run --name some-drupal -p 8080:80 -d amd64/drupal

Then, access it via http://localhost:8080 or http://host-ip:8080 in a browser.

There are multiple database types supported by this image, most easily used via Docker networks. In the default configuration, SQLite can be used to avoid a second container and write to flat-files. More detailed instructions for different (more production-ready) database types follow.

When first accessing the webserver provided by this image, it will go through a brief setup process. The details provided below are specifically for the "Set up database" step of that configuration process.

MySQL

For using Drupal with a MySQL database you'll want to run a MySQL container and configure it using environment variables for MYSQL_DATABASE, MYSQL_USER, MYSQL_PASSWORD, and MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD

$ docker run -d --name some-mysql --network some-network \
	-e MYSQL_DATABASE=drupal \
	-e MYSQL_USER=user \
	-e MYSQL_PASSWORD=password \
	-e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password \
mysql:5.7

In Drupal's "set up database" step on the web installation walkthrough enter the values for the environment variables you provided

  • Database name/username/password: <details for accessing your MySQL instance> (MYSQL_USER, MYSQL_PASSWORD, MYSQL_DATABASE; see environment variables in the description for mysql)
  • ADVANCED OPTIONS; Database host: some-mysql (Containers on the same docker-network are routable by their container-name)

PostgreSQL

For using Drupal with a PostgreSQL database you'll want to run a Postgres container and configure it using environment variables for POSTGRES_DB, POSTGRES_USER, and POSTGRES_PASSWORD

$ docker run -d --name some-postgres --network some-network \
	-e POSTGRES_DB=drupal \
	-e POSTGRES_USER=user \
	-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=pass \
postgres:11

In Drupal's "set up database" step on the web installation walkthrough enter the values for the environment variables you provided

  • Database type: PostgreSQL
  • Database name/username/password: <details for accessing your PostgreSQL instance> (POSTGRES_USER, POSTGRES_PASSWORD, POSTGRES_DB; see environment variables in the description for postgres)
  • ADVANCED OPTIONS; Database host: some-postgres (Containers on the same docker-network are routable by their container-name)

Volumes

By default, this image does not include any volumes. There is a lot of good discussion on this topic in docker-library/drupal#3, which is definitely recommended reading.

There is consensus that /var/www/html/modules, /var/www/html/profiles, and /var/www/html/themes are things that generally ought to be volumes (and might have an explicit VOLUME declaration in a future update to this image), but handling of /var/www/html/sites is somewhat more complex, since the contents of that directory do need to be initialized with the contents from the image.

If using bind-mounts, one way to accomplish pre-seeding your local sites directory would be something like the following:

$ docker run --rm amd64/drupal tar -cC /var/www/html/sites . | tar -xC /path/on/host/sites

This can then be bind-mounted into a new container:

$ docker run --name some-drupal --network some-network -d \
	-v /path/on/host/modules:/var/www/html/modules \
	-v /path/on/host/profiles:/var/www/html/profiles \
	-v /path/on/host/sites:/var/www/html/sites \
	-v /path/on/host/themes:/var/www/html/themes \
	amd64/drupal

Another solution using Docker Volumes:

$ docker volume create drupal-sites
$ docker run --rm -v drupal-sites:/temporary/sites amd64/drupal cp -aRT /var/www/html/sites /temporary/sites
$ docker run --name some-drupal --network some-network -d \
	-v drupal-modules:/var/www/html/modules \
	-v drupal-profiles:/var/www/html/profiles \
	-v drupal-sites:/var/www/html/sites \
	-v drupal-themes:/var/www/html/themes \
	amd64/drupal

... via docker compose

Example compose.yaml for drupal:

# Drupal with PostgreSQL
#
# Access via "http://localhost:8080"
#
# During initial Drupal setup,
# Database type: PostgreSQL
# Database name: postgres
# Database username: postgres
# Database password: example
# ADVANCED OPTIONS; Database host: postgres

services:

  drupal:
    image: drupal:10-apache
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    volumes:
      - /var/www/html/modules
      - /var/www/html/profiles
      - /var/www/html/themes
      # this takes advantage of the feature in Docker that a new anonymous
      # volume (which is what we're creating here) will be initialized with the
      # existing content of the image at the same location
      - /var/www/html/sites
    restart: always

  postgres:
    image: postgres:16
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: example
    restart: always

Run docker compose up, wait for it to initialize completely, and visit http://localhost:8080 or http://host-ip:8080 (as appropriate). When installing select postgres as database with the following parameters: dbname=postgres user=postgres pass=example hostname=postgres

Adding additional libraries / extensions

This image does not provide any additional PHP extensions or other libraries, even if they are required by popular plugins. There are an infinite number of possible plugins, and they potentially require any extension PHP supports. Including every PHP extension that exists would dramatically increase the image size.

If you need additional PHP extensions, you'll need to create your own image FROM this one. The documentation of the php image explains how to compile additional extensions. Additionally, the drupal:7 Dockerfile has an example of doing this.

The following Docker Hub features can help with the task of keeping your dependent images up-to-date:

  • Automated Builds let Docker Hub automatically build your Dockerfile each time you push changes to it.

Running as an arbitrary user

See the "Running as an arbitrary user" section of the php image documentation.

Image Variants

The amd64/drupal images come in many flavors, each designed for a specific use case.

amd64/drupal:<version>

This is the defacto image. If you are unsure about what your needs are, you probably want to use this one. It is designed to be used both as a throw away container (mount your source code and start the container to start your app), as well as the base to build other images off of.

Some of these tags may have names like bookworm or trixie in them. These are the suite code names for releases of Debian and indicate which release the image is based on. If your image needs to install any additional packages beyond what comes with the image, you'll likely want to specify one of these explicitly to minimize breakage when there are new releases of Debian.

amd64/drupal:<version>-fpm

This variant contains PHP's FastCGI Process Manager (FPM), which is the recommended FastCGI implementation for PHP.

In order to use this image variant, some kind of reverse proxy (such as NGINX, Apache, or other tool which speaks the FastCGI protocol) will be required.

WARNING: the FastCGI protocol is inherently trusting, and thus extremely insecure to expose outside of a private container network -- unless you know exactly what you are doing (and are willing to accept the extreme risk), do not use Docker's --publish (-p) flag with this image variant.

FPM configuration

This variant has a few FPM configuration files, each providing a small set of directives.

  • /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.conf: This is the PHP upstream-provided main configuration file. The only thing that isn't commented out is the include for php-fpm.d/*.conf under the [global] section.
  • /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/docker.conf: This is image specific configuration that makes FPM easier to run under Docker. With understanding, these may be overridden in user provided configuration.
  • /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf: This is the PHP upstream-provided www pool configuration with minor modifications for the image. This may be edited, replaced, or overridden in later configuration files as needed.
  • /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/zz-docker.conf: As of January 2026, this only contains daemonize = no under the [global] directive. This should not be overridden.

It is recommended to place user configuration in its own .conf file within /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/. Files are included in glob order, so they are sorted according to the collating sequence in effect in the current locale. Later files can override configuration from previous files. See also FPM's Official Configuration Reference.

Below is an example of adding custom FPM configuration using a Dockerfile.

FROM php:8-fpm
RUN set -eux; \
	{ \
		echo '[www]'; \
		echo 'pm.status_path = /status'; \
	} > /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/my-fpm.conf

Alternatively, a bind-mounted file at runtime can be used as long as the container user (www-data of the image by default) can read it (e.g. --mount type=bind,src=path/to/my-fpm.conf,dst=/usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/my-fpm.conf on docker run). Special care must be taken when mounting a folder of configuration files over the whole /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/ directory (e.g. --mount type=bind,src=path/to/fpm.d/,dst=/usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/); this replaces the php-fpm.d directory of the image, so any necessary directives from the image-provided configuration files (like daemonize = no) must be in the user-provided files.

Some other potentially helpful resources:

License

View license information for the software contained in this image.

As with all Docker images, these likely also contain other software which may be under other licenses (such as Bash, etc from the base distribution, along with any direct or indirect dependencies of the primary software being contained).

Some additional license information which was able to be auto-detected might be found in the repo-info repository's drupal/ directory.

As for any pre-built image usage, it is the image user's responsibility to ensure that any use of this image complies with any relevant licenses for all software contained within.