Deploy Portainer 🚢

Generate a standalone Portainer Community Edition server to manage your Docker host:

make ship PRESET=portainer

Review dist/portainer/.env before starting it:

Setting	Default	Purpose
PORTAINER_TAG	lts	Official long-term support image channel.
PORTAINER_CONFIG_PATH	./config/portainer	Persistent Portainer database and configuration directory.
PORTAINER_WEB_PORT	9443	Host port for the HTTPS interface.
PORTAINER_EDGE_PORT	8888	Host port mapped to the Edge agent tunnel on container port 8000.

Set PORTAINER_CONFIG_PATH to an existing Portainer data directory if you intend to reuse it. Stop any other Portainer server using that directory before launching this project, and back up the data before changing versions. The generator does not copy existing data into the new project.

make up PRESET=portainer

Open https://YOUR-HOST:9443, substituting your host address and configured HTTPS port. Complete Portainer's initial setup. Portainer uses a self-signed certificate by default; follow the current setup-token instructions if the selected release requests a token. Keep any token private.

The preset starts only Portainer, with no VPN or updater dependency. Portainer receives access to /var/run/docker.sock to manage the local Docker environment; restrict access to its management interface accordingly. The Edge port is used for Edge agent connections. See the official Docker installation guide for certificate and Edge details.

To include Portainer in another preset, select it in make configure or use ADD_SERVICES=portainer. Review the generated port values because presets may offset published ports. Configure network values through .env if they overlap an existing host network.

Regeneration preserves existing .env values and Portainer data. Recreate the project after editing .env; a plain container restart does not reload those settings. Portainer is eligible for automatic updates on its configured image tag when Watchtower monitors the host; the default tag is lts. Your containers, your helm.