 notified about newly released Docker images.
For this we have a tool for the job and a bonus one at the bottom, Let's discover them.
WatchTower is not only notifying you about new releases but also updates the running containers for you, however, this is not the ideal output we want since sometimes the new release can be a breaking one or needs some kind of preparation ahead of deploying it.
WatchTower works also as a Docker container, for that we will be writing a Docker Compose file to set our configuration for it.
WATCHTOWER_SCHEDULE is where you define when WatchTower will look for updates.
WATCHTOWER_INCLUDE_RESTARTING and WATCHTOWER_INCLUDE_STOPPED are to tell WatchTower to look for updates for stopped and restarting containers as well.
WATCHTOWER_MONITOR_ONLY used to tell WatchTower to not update (this is where notifications only part is).
WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATIONS this is where you define the notifications channels where possible values are email, slack, msteams, shoutrrr, and gotify (gotify is what we are using in this example, feel free to use whatever notification channel you want or need, we have a post on how to install it).
WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_GOTIFY_URL, WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_GOTIFY_TOKEN and WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_GOTIFY_TLS_SKIP_VERIFY are used to define the Gotify server information.
The other options are up to you to adapt like TZ (TimeZone), NO_COLOR, and docker-compose argument hostname so you can identify from where the notifications are coming.
app_1  | time="2021-11-22T21:37:54+01:00" level=warning msg="Using an HTTP url for Gotify is insecure"
app_1  | time="2021-11-22T21:37:56+01:00" level=info msg="Watchtower 1.3.0\nUsing notifications: gotify\nChecking all containers (except explicitly disabled with label)\nScheduling first run: 2021-11-23 19:00:00 +0100 +01\nNote that the first check will be performed in 21 hours, 22 minutes, 3 seconds"
If the above checks, we can say the setup was successful, now every day at 19:00 you will receive a notification if there is a container that needs to be updated so you can take action.
Diun (Docker Image Update Notifier), is a similar service, actually, it was built for the purpose of notifications only (unlike WatchTower, which can do both; notify and/or update).
We will see below how you can deploy and use it, then you can be the judge and use what you feel comfortable with.
Feel free to make the required changes to make it work, like changing the gotify notification information and credentials along with the schedule and timezone.
Personally, I like how WatchTower delivers notifications with a list of all updates available for each server I have while Diun is sending a notification for each update available.
But it's up to you to decide and choose between the two!
As always, I hope you learned something.
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