blackvoid Standard Notes - Docker self-hosted alternative for all your note needs

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blackvoid Standard Notes - Docker self-hosted alternative for all your note needs

Standard Notes - Docker self-hosted alternative for all your note needs

Not another one of those notes apps am I, right? I mean we have Synology Note Station, a globally popular Evernote, Apple Notes, Bear app, and a million others, so what makes Standard Notes special?

Notes? Who needs a notes app...?​


Before I write a bit why this article should make sense, in case you are not interested in what I have to say and are looking for the know-how of running this on your own Docker (Synology) platform, jump down to the "Requirements" section.

Standard Notes - Docker self-hosted alternative for all your note needs

Key features of Standard Notes
Standard Notes - Docker self-hosted alternative for all your note needs

More features can be unlocked with extensions (also free and covered by this tutorial)

As you can see from the images above, SN offers a lot. From a modern minimalistic look to a full mobile and desktop app, along with 2FA support, FaceID, and super fast sync service that just works.

You can host it yourself, preserving the data 100% on-site, access it anywhere from a web browser app connected to your server. Brilliant, just as Bitwarden setup is for passwords.

SN offers also a paid solution unless you don't feel up to it hosting it yourself and offers about 30 extensions at the moment to make your instance even more powerful than a simple notes app.

With its spartan looks and features, out of the box, you get a free note-taking app with sync. More than enough for the majority of people. If you are looking a bit more, like support for markdown, code, themes, 2Fa, etc, then you will need to either pay a small monthly fee or host them yourself.

This article will show you how to make it all happen and run it inside Docker on your Synology NAS along with (also free and open-source) all extensions that SN offers.


Continue reading...
 
Now I'm in! I've set up a Ubuntu VM, installed Visual Studio Code and learned how to create a docker image. The docker image is built upon the freely available extensions sources, the source files you @Rusty already used, and the nginx image from Docker Hub.

Honestly, this was an easy task. At the end, I got a running extension container that could be used in the SN web app as w,ell as on Android and in the Windows app. The container is of course running on my Synology NAS.

One question to the audience: After building the image, I had to save/export the image using command docker save or docker export on Ubuntu. The exported binaries where then loaded into docker on my Synology using docker load command.

I did not want to mess around with any docker repository so far, however, the current process with loading the docker image directly, has got one caveat: The running container does not show up on Synology docker admin app.

So has anybody an advice on how to do better image/container handling so that it can be administrated with Synology docker admin? Do I have to mandatory use Docker Hub?
 
Well done m8!

As far as using the image and the fact that it should be visible inside docker ui, I have done a few images in the past but I don’t recall anything special for it to be visible in Syno ui.

Truth be told I did build it up on the synology docker end if that makes any difference. Still, I have export that image and used it on several other devices (remote) and once it was loaded it again showed up just fine.
 
Make sure to not expose this image registry to the internet, as it has not authentification/authorization build in. If no personal details are embedded in the image, why not push it straight to dockerhub? The process to push images to dockerhub slightly deviates from pushing them to a private docker registery. For the private registry, you would need to tag your image with fqdn:port/group/repo:tag, for dockerhub you would just tag your images with user/repo:tag, then use your docker account (if non exists, create one -> it's free) to perform a docker login, then use docker push ${whatever you used to tag your image} to actualy push it.

If you want to host your images localy, your might want to take a look at the jfrog container registry or harbor. Even though it seems like are ment to be used with Kubernetes, they work perfectly fine with good old Docker.
 
Make sure to not expose this image registry to the internet, as it has not authentification/authorization build in.
As far as I've read somewhere there is also a config setting in SN that can prevent further registrations...
-- post merged: --

Updated the article with docker-compose section for running extensions.
In your update you used two different sources for the extensions, IMO: the composer file uses mtoohey/standard notes-extensions and later on you mentioned the extensions from iganeshk - Overview.

Is this by intention?
 
As far as I've read somewhere there is also a config setting in SN that can prevent further registrations...
I am not sure what SN is, though unlike the other two products I mentioned, the Docker Registry ist just the simple core service without any management UI. You might want to check Deploy a registry server to get an idea of what's possible. If you not intend open it up to the internet, the Docker Registry is just fine and gets the job done.
 
I am not sure what SN is, though unlike the other two products I mentioned, the Docker Registry ist just the simple core service without any management UI. You might want to check Deploy a registry server to get an idea of what's possible. If you not intend open it up to the internet, the Docker Registry is just fine and gets the job done.
SN=Standard Notes and as motioned here arugifa/standardnotes-server-docker , you obviously can set an option to disable user registration.
 
Is this by intention?
Yes. The yaml files remain the same regardless the method of deployment (web station hosting or docker). Just wanted to show that it can work. The docker version is just there to make the volume for the extensions using the source files from the repository that I introduced in the entire extensions section.

Just goes to show that no matter what docker image is used for the extensions, source of the actual extensions can be any repository that is compatible.
 
Looks like the SN docker image is deprecated! There is a new method for installing and updating the docker container. @Rusty have you seen this?


 
Yes I have about an hour ago. Still haven't had time to redo the tutorial. Will do it today at some point. First glance, just an image change, nothing else.
As far as I can see this is the new docker image
Code:
docker pull standardnotes/syncing-server-js

will give it a try today to update my container ;)
 
Yes I saw that to and there is also an auth image and an api-gateway in the docker-compose file?!
Yep, quite a bit of that has been redone. I'll run the new server in parallel and make sure its running fine before I kill the old one.
 
Last edited:
Just a quick update. Managed to get it running a stack using the new repo. The existing web app works as well as extensions.

Running with 7 new containers (instead of 2 so far), but it is all straightforward. Nothing major needs to be changed in the compose file apart from the secrets.

Personally, I cut out the DB part considering it's running as a separate container outside the SN stack.

New DB needs to be created (because of encryption) so don't try and clone the existing one and connect to it with the new instance. Create a new DB, let the stack run through the process, and then just export/import your notes.

I did it that way and there were 0 problems. Extensions work just fine as well.

I Will do a rewrite of the article at a later time (hopefully today).

UPDATE: article is up-to-date with the new repo/docker image(s)
 

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