UniFi Network Controller for Docker

This is an opinionated take on a UniFi Network Controller container. Because UniFi Network Controller is so complex, this image takes the approach of deviating as little as possible from a supported configuration. To that end, this image expects to be attached directly to your management network and use Docker volumes to avoid the need for port and uid mapping. The result is a Dockerfile and init script a fraction of the size of the popular jacobalberty/unifi image. Because this image remains so close to a supported configuration, we can more quickly respond to software updates with fewer hacks than others.

Usage

Create a Docker interface to your management network. Suppose your management network is on VLAN 100 with subnet 192.168.100.0/24 and accessible via the host interface eth0. Run the following:

docker network create \
  --driver macvlan \
  --subnet 192.168.100.0/24 \
  --gateway 192.168.100.1 \
  --opt parent=eth0.100 \
  mgmt

To ensure your UniFi configs persist across restarts, prepare a Docker volume to map into the container. Do not simply map a host directory into the container! Docker won't initialize it properly and UniFi almost certainly won't have permission to write to it.

docker volume create unifi

On a typical Docker installation, you will have access to this volume from the host at /var/lib/docker/volumes/unifi/_data.

Finally, run the container as follows:

docker run \
  --name unifi \
  --net mgmt \
  --ip 192.168.100.2 \
  -v unifi:/var/lib/unifi \
  --cap-add DAC_READ_SEARCH \
  --cap-add NET_BIND_SERVICE \
  --cap-add SETGID \
  --cap-add SETUID \
  --sysctl net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0 \
  iamjamestl/unifi