Joplin Server is a self-hosted solution to synchronize your own notes, it supports multiple clients for Desktop and Mobile and comes with an optional end-to-end encryption.

At the time of writing this article only clients newer than version 2.x work with the Joplin Server. This means you need to download the latest version of the desktop client from the GitHub repo. For the mobile apps, there is currently no new version that supports syncing with the Joplin server, but those are coming.

Update 17. Jun 2021: Jolpin for iOS and Android received an update. As of today, mobile apps can also synchronize with a self-hosted Jolpin Server.

Install Joplin Server on Docker with Traefik

Preparation

Info

If you don’t have docker installed yet, you can find instructions for Ubuntu or Debian. This Guide uses docker-compose to run Traefik, therefore its necessary to also install docker-compose. The two linked guides will help you to setup docker-compose on your own host.

First we will create an extra folder for all Joplin Server data:

mkdir -p /opt/containers/joplin

docker-compose.yml for Joplin Server

vim /opt/containers/joplin/docker-compose.yml

version: '3'
services:
    joplin-db:
        image: postgres:13.1
        volumes:
            - ./data/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data
        restart: unless-stopped
        environment:
            - APP_PORT=22300
            - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
            - POSTGRES_USER=${POSTGRES_USER}
            - POSTGRES_DB=${POSTGRES_DATABASE}
        networks:
            - joplin
    joplin-app:
        image: joplin/server:latest
        depends_on:
            - joplin-db
        restart: unless-stopped
        environment:
            - APP_BASE_URL=${APP_BASE_URL}
            - DB_CLIENT=pg
            - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
            - POSTGRES_DATABASE=${POSTGRES_DATABASE}
            - POSTGRES_USER=${POSTGRES_USER}
            - POSTGRES_PORT=${POSTGRES_PORT}
            - POSTGRES_HOST=joplin-db
        networks:
            - proxy
            - joplin
        labels:
            - "traefik.enable=true"
            - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-app.rule=Host(`joplin.ae3.ch`)"
            - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-app.entrypoints=http"
            - "traefik.http.middlewares.joplin-app-https-redirect.redirectscheme.scheme=https"
            - "traefik.http.middlewares.joplin-app-https-header.headers.customrequestheaders.X-Forwarded-Proto = http"
            - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-app-secure.entrypoints=https"
            - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-app-secure.rule=Host(`joplin.ae3.ch`)"
            - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-app-secure.tls=true"
            - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-app-secure.tls.certresolver=http"
            - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-app-secure.service=joplin-app"
            - "traefik.http.services.joplin-app.loadbalancer.server.port=22300"
            - "traefik.http.services.joplin-app.loadbalancer.passhostheader=true"
            - "traefik.docker.network=proxy"
networks:
  joplin:
  proxy:
    external: true

Make sure that you have put your own domain in the labels. Otherwise Traefik will not be able to recognize your domain.

Info

These instructions assume that you have already set up Traefik on your host. If you don’t have Traefik running yet, you can follow these instructions.

Next, we create an environment file in the same folder. All variable data will be stored in this file, for example the SQL login data.

vim /opt/containers/joplin/.env

APP_BASE_URL=https://joplin.ae3.ch/ # CHANGE HERE
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=GiVaJcumfCrDW@9uAo # USE A RANDOM PASSWORD HERE
POSTGRES_DATABASE=joplin
POSTGRES_USER=joplin
POSTGRES_PORT=5432

Start Joplin Server with docker-compose

That’s it. Now you can simply start Joplin Server on your host.

docker-compose -f /opt/containers/joplin/docker-compose.yml up d

Visit your domain (https://joplin.example.com/login) and login with the following default credentials. Make sure to change these after the first login!

Username: admin@localhost Password: admin

FAQ

Why can’t I synchronize my desktop/mobile client with Joplin Server?

You will probably get the following error when you try to connect your client to the Joplin server.

App: 400: POST /api/files/root:/:/children : Not allowed: POST (CODE 400)

This error is due to your local client wich is outdated. You need to download the latest client version (min. version 2.x) from Joplin’s GitHub repo, only with version 2 the sync will work.