this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Are there any concerns/risks to using Watchtower? (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by notdoreen@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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Someone recommended it for keeping my containers up to date automatically. I checked out the repo and it seems too good to be true. It just updates your containers when a new image is available and everything just works out of the box? I'm a bit scared of just leaving it alone in case it might break something. The fact that it doesn't come with a gui also scares me a bit.

Does anyone here use it and can recommend it? Any horror stories?

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[–] davidht0@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I've been using watchtower for more than a year on all my containers and no issues so far. I have read many warnings against automating the updates, but it has never broken anything in my case. I'm talking about 3 VMs (on Proxmox) and 2 Synology boxes. 5 instances of watchtower keeping a total of 84 containers updated.

Nonetheless I try to play it on the safe side and make daily backups in case something breaks. I've had a couple of containers breaking (nothing related to watchtower, AFAIK) and I have recovered easily restoring the latest backup.

[–] notdoreen@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Thank you. What do you use for container backups and restoring?

[–] unixuser011@alien.top 2 points 11 months ago

Don't backup the actual container, backup the volumes and the docker-compose file

[–] davidht0@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago
  • 3 VMs in Proxmox hosting 70 containers get backed up everyday with ProxmoxBackupServer (VM in my primary NAS) to a NFS mounted folder on my primary NAS
  • Primary NAS (with 7 containers) gets backed up with Snapshot replication to my secondary NAS everyday.
  • Secondary NAS (with 7 containers) gets backed up with Snapshot replication to my primay NAS everyday.
  • And once a month I backup my primary NAS (not the whole thing,only the important folders) to a USB drive that I store at a friends house.
[–] GolemancerVekk@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Please take such advice with a large grain of salt. OP's experience is very much not the norm. Especially for more complex apps like Jellyfin or Nextcloud, it's almost guaranteed you'll break them if you just update blindly.

[–] Byolock@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Using Watchtower for approximately 2 years on about 20 Containers. I had 1 issue, where a container would not start after the update. The Error Message said I had an unsupported entry in the configuration file of the app. I looked up the changelog of that app, and found out that the option was removed and replaced by something else. Had to change one line in the configuration. Not really a problem for me.

Though I decided to exclude my Home Automation Container and my kasm container ( my gateway to my network, a bit like guacamole ). Those may pose problems if they are offline unexpected.