This guide will get you Ghost running inside a super tiny and secure Alpine Linux container.

Prerequisites

Setup Ghost

Install dependencies

apk add curl unzip nodejs

Download Ghost files

mkdir -p /var/www/ghost
cd /var/www/ghost
curl -L https://ghost.org/zip/ghost-latest.zip -o ghost.zip
unzip -uo ghost.zip

Install Ghost

From the /var/www/ghost directory

npm install --production

Edit Config

cp /var/www/ghost/config.example.js /var/www/ghost/config.js

At minimum you will need to chage the production.server.host value to 0.0.0.0

Start your new site

Again, from the /var/www/ghost directory.

npm start --production

You can now visit your site at http://[ip address]:2368

Additional setup information is available in the Ghost Documentation

Start Ghost at container boot

We will use the local service to run our start up script when the system boots

Enable local service

rc-update add local

Create startup script

Create a file called /etc/local.d/ghost.start and add the following lines:

cd /var/www/ghost
/usr/bin/npm start --production

Make the script executable

chmod +x /etc/local.d/ghost.start

Boot up test

Exit the container with the exit command. Then you need to restart the container and then test if Ghost is running once again.

# from the lxc host
lxc-shutdown -n ghost
lxc-start -n ghost

If Ghost does not come back up, look at the log stored in /npm-debug.log

Start Ghost container at system boot

We’ve setup our Ghost service to start up when the container boots, but we also need to set up our Ghost container to start when the host boots.

From the host machine, edit /var/lib/lxc/ghost/config to add the following line:

lxc.start.auto = 1

To test to make sure your container will boot on startup, shut down the container and then run the following command:

lxc-autostart

This command starts all containers that are marked to boot on startup. After running this command you should be able to navigate to your Ghost blog from your web browser.

Create clean backup

Not that you would ever screw up your container, but it’s a good idea to create a backup once everything is setup properly, and before any real changes are made.

lxc-stop -n ghost
cd /var/lib/lxc/ghost
tar --numeric-owner -czvf ghost_vanilla.tar.gz ./*
lxc-start -n ghost

Now what?

I don’t know. Maybe checkout the Getting Started Guide.