Installation

PetHealth is a single container: the API and the web UI run together on port 3001 inside the container, and all data lives in /app/data.

For home networks

PetHealth is built for your home or local network. It hasn’t been through a security audit or penetration testing, so don’t expose it directly to the internet. To use it away from home, connect through a VPN such as WireGuard or Tailscale.

Requirements

• Docker Engine 20+ (or Docker Desktop), plus Docker Compose v2 if you use Compose.
• About 200 MB of disk for the image, plus whatever your uploads take.
• The image is linux/amd64. For ARM, see Build from source.

Docker Compose (recommended)

Create a folder and add two files.

docker-compose.yml

services:
  pethealth:
    image: martitoci/pethealth:latest
    container_name: pethealth
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3000:3001"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/data
    env_file: .env

.env

echo "JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
echo "TZ=America/New_York" >> .env

Then start it:

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f   # optional: watch the first start

On the first start the log shows lines like these (migrations, the default user, the demo pets):

🔄 Migración 5 aplicada
⚠️  Usuario por defecto creado: admin / admin123 — se pedirá cambiarla al entrar
🐾 Mascotas de demostración creadas: Milo, Luna, Copito, Rocky
🚀 Backend corriendo en puerto 3001

(Server logs are in Spanish.) See Environment variables for everything you can put in .env.

docker run

docker run -d --name pethealth --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 3000:3001 \
  -e JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  -e TZ=America/New_York \
  -v "$(pwd)/data:/app/data" \
  martitoci/pethealth:latest

Add more -e NAME=value flags for other settings.

Build from source

Use this on ARM machines or if you want to change the code.

git clone https://github.com/chmedinap/pethealth.git
cd pethealth
cp .env.example .env      # then set JWT_SECRET (openssl rand -hex 32)
docker compose up --build -d

The repository’s docker-compose.yml builds the image locally and passes every supported variable from .env.

Start empty instead of with demo data

Set SEED_DEMO=false before the first start. Demo pets are only created when the database is new, so changing it later has no effect. Delete the demo pets from their profile instead.

Updating

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Database migrations run automatically on startup. Read the release notes before updating, and keep a backup of data/.

Uninstalling

docker compose down        # stop and remove the container
rm -rf data                # ⚠️ deletes all your pets' data