---
tableofcontents: 1
redirect_from: "/Install-with-Docker"
---

# Install with Docker

Welcome to the AzerothCore Docker guide!

## Introduction

Installing AzerothCore using Docker is a simplified procedure that has several benefits:

- It's very easy! Docker will do all the dirty work for you.
- It can be done in all operating systems where Docker is available (including **Windows**, **GNU/Linux**, **macOS**)
- You don't need to install many dependencies (forget about _visual studio_, _cmake_, _mysql_, etc.. they are **NOT** required)
- Forget about platform-specific bugs. When using Docker, AzerothCore will always run in **Linux-mode**. 
- There are many other [benefits when using Docker](https://www.google.com/search?q=docker+benefits)

## Setup

### Software requirements

The only requirements are [git](https://git-scm.com/download/) and Docker.

#### New Operating Systems [recommended]:
- For GNU/Linux install [Docker](https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu)
- For macOS 10.12+ Sierra and newer version install [Docker Desktop for Mac](https://hub.docker.com/editions/community/docker-ce-desktop-mac)
- For Windows 10 install [Docker Desktop for Windows](https://hub.docker.com/editions/community/docker-ce-desktop-windows)

#### Old Operating Systems [not tested]:
- For macOS older than 10.11 El Capitan and older install [Docker Toolbox for Mac](https://docs.docker.com/toolbox/toolbox_install_mac/)
- For Windows 7/8/8.1 install [Docker Toolbox for Windows](https://docs.docker.com/toolbox/toolbox_install_windows/)


Before going further, make sure you have `docker` and `docker compose` installed in your system by typing in a terminal:

```
docker --version
```
```
docker compose version
```

You should see a similar output:

```
Docker version 20.10.5, build 55c4c88
Docker Compose version 2.10.2
```

**Note for Windows users**: you can use **git-bash** (the shell included in git) as a terminal.

### Clone the AzerothCore repository

You need to clone the AzerothCore repository (or use your own fork):

```
git clone https://github.com/azerothcore/azerothcore-wotlk.git
```

Now go into the main directory using `cd azerothcore-wotlk`. **All commands will have to be run inside this folder**.

### Installation

Inside your terminal (if you use Windows, use git bash), run the following commands inside the azerothcore-wotlk folder

**IMPORTANT**: the following procedure uses our acore.sh dashboard, however, these commands are a shortcut of the docker compose ones.
      you can check the docker compose commands used in background by running `./acore.sh docker --help` and read the description of each command


**1) Compile AzerothCore:**
```
./acore.sh docker build
```
It will build docker images and compile the core automatically!
This may take a while. Meanwhile you can go and drink a glass of wine :wine_glass:

**NOTE For dev:** if you are working with code and you need a fast way to compile your binaries, the command above
can be a bit overkill for you because you probably do not need to rebuild images.
Therefore, we suggest to use one of the following solution instead:

* `./acore.sh docker dev:build` it only builds the dev image and compiles the sources.

**2) Download the client data:**

```
./acore.sh docker client-data
```

**IMPORTANT**: This command should be executed only at the first installation and when there's a new version of the client-data available

**3) Run the containers**

```
./acore.sh docker start:app
```

**Congratulations! Now you have an up and running azerothcore server! Continue to the next step to create an account**

If you need to run this in background, you can use the following command to run the docker compose detached mode:

```
./acore.sh docker start:app:d
```

**4) Access the worldserver console**

Open a new terminal and run the following command

```
docker compose ps
```

find the name of worldserver

```
azerothcore-wotlk_ac-authserver_1    ./acore.sh run-authserver     Up             0.0.0.0:3724->3724/tcp,:::3724->3724/tcp
azerothcore-wotlk_ac-database_1      docker-entrypoint.sh mysqld   Up (healthy)   0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp,:::3306->3306/tcp, 33060/tcp
azerothcore-wotlk_ac-worldserver_1   ./acore.sh run-worldserver    Up             0.0.0.0:7878->7878/tcp,:::7878->7878/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8085->8085/tcp,:::8085->8085/tcp
```

and then attach the worldserver. E.g.

```
docker attach azerothcore-wotlk_ac-worldserver_1
```

If you got error message `the input device is not a TTY.  If you are using mintty, try prefixing the command with 'winpty'` 

This command will automatically attach your terminal to the worldserver console. 
Now you can run the `account create <user> <password>` command to [create your first in-game account.](creating-accounts.md)

**IMPORTANT**:  **To detach**: press `ctr+p` and `ctrl+q`. Do **NOT** try to detach using `ctrl+c` or you will kill your worldserver process!

**5) Access database and update realmlist**

To access your MySQL database we recommend clients like [HeidiSQL](https://www.heidisql.com/) (for Windows/Linux+Wine) or [SequelPro](https://www.sequelpro.com/) (for macOS). Use `root` as user and `127.0.0.1` as default host.
The default password of the root DB user will be `password`.

Unless your server installation is on the same network as your client, you might want to update the `realmlist` address in the `acore_auth` database with your server public IP address :
```sql
USE acore_auth;
SELECT * FROM realmlist;
UPDATE realmlist SET address='<SERVER PUBLIC IP ADDRESS>';
```

### How to keep your AzerothCore updated with the latest changes

First of all, you just need to use the `git` tool to update your repository by running the following common command:

`git pull origin master` : this will download latest commits from the azerothcore repository

Then you can just run the following command:

`./acore.sh docker build`: to rebuild the images and generate new binaries.

NOTE:  We do not update so often the client data, but when it happens you can run the following command:

`./acore.sh docker client-data`: it will download the new version of the client data if there's a new version available

### How to run the worldserver with GDB

Running the server with GDB allows you to generate a crashdump if the server crashes. The crashdump file is useful for developers to understand which lines are failing and possibly fix it.

**Keep in mind that you should compile your code with one of the following compilation types: Debug or RelWithDebInfo, otherwise GDB won't work properly**

To enable GDB the steps are the following:

1. Create a `config.sh` file under the `/conf/` directory of the azerothcore-wotlk repository
2. Add this configuration inside: `AC_RESTARTER_WITHGDB=true`. It will configure the restarter used by our docker services to use GDB instead of the binaries directly
3. Restart your containers and that's it!

If the server crashes, you will find the crashdump file (`gdb.txt`) within the `/env/docker` folder

### How to use the dev-container

Within our docker compose you can find the `ac-dev-server` service
This service is used for our build and db operations, but it can also be used
by you to develop with the [VSCode Remote Docker extension](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/containers)

A dev-container lets you use a Docker container as a full-featured development environment. The **.devcontainer** folder in our project contains files to tell VS Code how to access (or create) a development container with all the needed tools. This container will run the AzerothCore with all the software and the configurations needed for working with our codebase and debugging the server.

Inside the azerothcore repo there's a pre-configured `devcontainer.json` that can be opened by using the VSCode command palette.
To setup the Dev-Container follow these steps:

1. [install and open VSCode](https://code.visualstudio.com/)
2. install the [remote-container](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers) extension
3. Open the azerothcore folder inside VSCode
4. Open the VSCode [command palette](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/userinterface#_command-palette) (Ctrl+Shift+P) and run: `>Remote-Containers: Reopen in Container` 

**IMPORTANT**: The dev-container also contains a pre-configured debugger action that allows you to use breakpoints and debug your worldserver. 

Do not forget that you need to [Remote Container extension](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers) 
installed in your [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) IDE

#### How to debug your code with the dev-container

NOTE: **Keep in mind that you should compile your code with the Debug mode, otherwise the debugger won't work properly**

Once inside the VSCode dev-container you can go to the debug session and use the `Linux/Docker debug` action as you can see in this image:

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/147092/115712693-5a837d80-a375-11eb-98aa-b415e1919125.png)

It will run a worldserver in debug mode and then you can start placing breakpoints in your code to debug it.

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/147092/115712867-9cacbf00-a375-11eb-9cab-890e4f68d98b.png)

For more info about how to debug in vscode you can refer to the [official guide](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/debugging)

### How to create a second realm with docker compose

To create a second realm we suggest you to take a look at the example available within the http://github.com/azerothcore/acore-docker repository.

## More info

### Adding Modules

To add a module simply place the module directory inside of the `/azerothcore-wotlk/modules` directory.

After adding a module you'll have to rebuild azerothcore:
```
./acore.sh docker build
```

If the added module makes use of configurations files you'll have to place them in the `azerothcore-wotlk/env/docker/etc/modules` directory.  If this modules directory doesn't exist, you'll have to manually create it yourself.

After rebuilding you can [(re)start the containers](#how-can-i-start-stop-create-and-destroy-my-containers) again.

## FAQ

### Where are the etc and logs folders of my server?

By default they are located in `env/docker/authserver/` and `env/docker/worldserver/`.

### How can I change the docker containers configuration?

You can copy the file `/conf/dist/.env.docker` to `.env` and place it in the root folder of the project, then edit it according to your needs.

In the `.env` file you can configure:

- the location of the `data`, `etc` and `logs` folders
- the open ports
- the MySQL root password

You can check all the configurations available in the `docker-compose.yml` file

Then your `docker compose up` will automatically locate the `.env` with your custom settings.

### How can I start, stop, create and destroy my containers?

- The `docker compose start --profile app start` will start your existing app containers in detached mode.

- The `docker compose stop` will stop your containers, but it won't remove them.

- The `docker compose --profile app up` builds, (re)creates, and starts your app services.

- The `docker compose down --remove-orphans` command will stop your containers, but it also removes the stopped containers as well as any networks that were created.

- ⚠️ The `docker compose down --rmi all -v --remove-orphans` : command will stop, remove, and delete EVERYTHING. Including the volumes with the associated database ⚠️ 

### How to deal with the permission issues

#### [Linux] You must run docker without sudo

It's very important to run Docker without using sudo or the root user when possible. To do that you must setup your current user to be part of the docker group.
Please, follow the official guide to configure it: [Post-installation steps for Linux](https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/)

#### [Linux] the containers are running as root

For simplicity, we run all the containers of the `azerothcore-wotlk` repo as root user to avoid permission issues while running them.
However, it means that you need to reset the user permissions of the files created by the containers on your host, you can easily do it by running this command 

```sudo chown -R $(id -u):$(id -g) .```

If you want to run your containers with a different user instead, you need to create an `.env` file in the root directory and set the following variables:

```
DOCKER_USER=acore
DOCKER_USER_ID=1000
DOCKER_GROUP_ID=1000
```

The USER_ID and the GROUP_ID must be aligned with the user of your host

### How can I delete my database files?

**Warning** Once you've deleted your database files they are unrecoverable unless you have a backup.

To remove your database files you firstly want to make sure that your containers have been stopped and removed by typing: `docker compose down`.

After stopping and removing your containers you can proceed to remove the volume by typing: `docker volume rm azerothcore-wotlk_ac-database`

**Note** If you've changed your folder name from the default `azerothcore-wotlk` the volume name will be slightly different. To find the new volume name you can use the command `docker volume ls`. The volume should be labelled something along the lines of `xxxx_ac-database`.

### Performance optimizations (for dev server)

NOTE: If you are not experimenting any particular issues with I/O performance, we suggest to **NOT** use this configuration

The **osxfs** and the NTFS are well known to have [performance limitations](https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/1592) with docker binded volumes, we optimized the docker compose by using volumes and the "delegated/cached" strategy when possible, but that's not enough for some configurations.

* **Windows users:** we suggest to use the [WSL2](https://docs.docker.com/desktop/windows/wsl/) to clone our repo and work with docker. It has similar performance to a native linux environment

* **Mac users:** unfortunately there is not something similar to WSL2 on Mac, however, only the `ac-dev-server` uses binded src volumes that can cause such slowness.
  If you still want to use the `ac-dev-server` under Mac, consider to try the [acore-docker one](https://www.azerothcore.org/acore-docker/#dev-server). It uses named volumes
  that are way faster than the binded ones.

### Memory usage

The total amount of RAM when running all AzerothCore docker containers is **less than 2 GB** with no players online.

This is an example of a fresh, empty AzerothCore server running with Docker on macOS:

![AzerothCore Containers Memory](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/75517/51341568-f258d980-1a91-11e9-9cc1-121591477910.png)

When used on GNU/Linux system, the amount of memory used by Docker is even less.

### Docker containers vs Virtual machines

Using Docker will have the same benefits as using virtual machines, but with much less overhead:

![Docker containers vs Virtual machines](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/75517/51078179-d4fec680-16b1-11e9-8ce6-87b5053f55dd.png)

_AzerothCore running on macOS with Docker_
![AzerothCore on macOS using Docker](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/75517/51341229-2089e980-1a91-11e9-8d06-ebd5897552d4.png)

_AzerothCore running on Windows 10 with Docker_
![AzerothCore on Windows 10 with Docker](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/75517/51561998-966ec600-1e80-11e9-939e-d522c71de459.png)

### Docker reference & support requests

For server administrators, we recommend to read the [Docker documentation](https://docs.docker.com/) as well as the [Docker Compose reference](https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/overview/).

If you want to be an administrator of an AzerothCore production server, it helps if you master the basics of Docker usage.

Feel free to ask questions on [StackOverflow](https://stackoverflow.com/) and link them in the **#support-docker** channel of our [Discord chat](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/azerothcore). We will be happy to help you!