• Table of Contents
• docker-postgis
  • Overview
  • Tagged versions
  • Getting the image
  • Running the container
    • Using the terminal
    • Convenience docker-compose.yml
  • Interacting with the database
    • Connect via psql client
    • Connect via GIS Desktop
  • Docker image versions
  • Advanced Documentation
  • Support
  • Credits

A simple docker container that runs PostGIS

Highlights and feature of this image:

• Provides SSL support out of the box and enforces SSL client connections
• Connections are restricted to the docker subnet
• A default database gis is created for you so you can use this container 'out of the box' when it runs with e.g. QGIS
• Streaming replication and logical replication support included (turned off by default)
• Ability to create multiple database when starting the container.
• Ability to create multiple schemas when starting the container.
• Enable multiple extensions in the database when setting it up.
• Gdal drivers automatically registered for pg raster.
• Support for out-of-db rasters.

There is a nice 'from scratch' tutorial on using this docker image on Alex Urquhart's blog here - if you are just getting started with docker, PostGIS and QGIS, we recommend that you read it and try out the instructions specified on the blog.

The following convention is used for tagging the images we build:

kartoza/postgis:[POSTGRES_MAJOR_VERSION]-[POSTGIS_MAJOR_VERSION].[POSTGIS_MINOR_RELEASE]

So for example:

kartoza/postgis:17-3.5 Provides PostgreSQL 17.0, PostGIS 3.5

Note: We highly recommend that you use tagged versions because successive minor versions of PostgreSQL write their database clusters into different database directories - which will cause your database to appear to be empty if you are using persistent volumes for your database storage.

To get the image onto your system:

• Pulling from Central Registry (Dockerhub)
• Building locally - Consult the Developer Guidelines

To create a running container do:

docker run --name "postgis" -p 25432:5432 -d -t kartoza/postgis

Note: If you do not pass the env variable POSTGRES_PASS a random password will be generated and will be visible from the logs or within the container in /tmp/PGPASSWORD.txt.

For convenience, we provide a docker-compose.yml that will run a copy of the database image and also our related database backup image (see https://github.com/kartoza/docker-pg-backup).

The docker-compose recipe will expose PostgreSQL on port 25432 (to prevent potential conflicts with any local database instance you may have),

Example usage:

docker-compose up -d

Note: The docker-compose recipe above will not persist your data on your local disk, only in a docker volume.

Connect with psql (make sure you first install postgresql client tools on your host / client):

psql -h localhost -U docker -p 25432 -l

Note: Default postgresql user is 'docker'. If you do not pass the env variable POSTGRES_PASS a random strong password will be generated and can be accessed within the startup logs.

You can then go on to use any normal postgresql commands against the container.

Under ubuntu LTS the postgresql client can be installed like this:

sudo apt-get install postgresql-client-${POSTGRES_MAJOR_VERSION}

Where POSTGRES_MAJOR_VERSION corresponds to a specific PostgreSQL version i.e 12

1. Open QGIS Desktop and choose Data Source Manager.
2. Select PostgreSQL Connector
3. Populate the credentials as per the running container.

4. Connect to the database and start interacting with your data.

This README focuses on simplicity. Additional documentation covering advanced configuration and examples can be found here:

• Advanced-Configuration
• Developer-Guidelines

All instructions mentioned in the README are valid for the latest running image. Other docker images might have a few missing features than the ones in the latest image. We mainly do not back port changes to current stable images that are being used in production. However, if you feel that some changes included in the latest tagged version of the image are essential for the previous image you can cherry-pick the changes against that specific branch and we will test and merge.

If you require more substantial assistance from kartoza (because our work and interaction on docker-postgis is pro bono), please consider taking out a Support Level Agreement.

• Tim Sutton (tim@kartoza.com)
• Gavin Fleming (gavin@kartoza.com)
• Rizky Maulana (rizky@kartoza.com)
• Admire Nyakudya (admire@kartoza.com)