Watchtower - open source way to get notified, or have your Docker containers updated automatically

Watchtower has been on my list for a long time. I’ve avoided it because I was initially told it would just update all of my Docker containers automatically. I’m not one to do auto-update things. I like to read about it, understand the changes, and know if it's going to break anything before I update in 99% of the cases. Now, knowing that, I have rarely had breaking changes in containers, but it definitely does happen.

If you are someone who isn't averse to breaking changes, then you should consider letting Watchtower do it's thing full speed ahead. However, if you are like me, then you'll be happy to know that you can setup Watchtower to simply notify you when there are new versions of your docker images available, and you can then choose to update, or stay where you are.

LINKS:
Shownotes

Watchtower for Docker

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Beginning

00:09 Introduction to Watchtower
02:10 Thank you to my Patrons and Subscribers! Truly, I appreciate all of your support
02:53 Getting Setup for Watchtower
06:30 Adding labels for Monitor Only in Watchtower
08:10 Installing Watchtower with Email Notification flags
11:15 Setting Watchtower to run on a Schedule
14:15 Setting up Watchtower on my Production Server - UGH! You don't want to miss this!

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ATTRIBUTIONS

[Mayhem]

Thanks for the video. I was unsure how to set up monitor only stuff in watchtower and your video helped me get started. You explained things very clearly so I'm going to investigate more of your videos.

While I was reading the watchtower documentation I noticed there's some arguements that suit my needs. Rather than mark the individual containers with labels I can see you can just startwatchtower in monitor mode for all containers right in the docker command. Look at the WATCHTOWER_MONITOR_ONLY environment variable. I'm just trying this today but it seems it will watch all containers and send you an email when there's updates for them. I hope it works the way I think it does.

There's also WATCHTOWER_POLL_INTERVAL where you can give it the seconds that you want it to check for updates rather than setting up the cron schedule.

[larrybahr]

Really cool tool. I have heard about it, but never had time to check it out. Great video!

[gouthamshiv]

you’re doing a great work.. keep it going !!

[ncs]

Nice work, I can see this being very helpful.

You forgot the link to the Rocket Chat in the description btw.

[modo]

First of all thanks for the helpful video.
How do I handle container updates?
I don't mean updating the base image when it changes, but applying regular security updates with apt. What in case of automatic security updates?
Set up unattended-upgrades in each Docker container with appropriate update interval or automatically rebuild the image if Dockerfile contains a "RUN apt update && apt upgrade -y" statement or even include unattended-updates as RUN command in Dockerfile and rebuild the image each time?
I'm wondering why I can't find many resources on this topic because it's so important. Can you (and/or someone) please cover this question?

[Firejaps]

Best intro in IT channels !
(The content its nice too! xD)
Btw do you have discord community ?