In today's digital age, managing documents efficiently is essential, whether you're running a personal archive or a library. One great open-source solution for this purpose is Paperless-ngx — a powerful document management system that helps you digitize, archive, tag, and search your documents easily.
In this post, I’ll Walk you through setting up Paperless-ngx using Docker Compose on a Linux server. This method is clean, fast, and maintainable — perfect for both tech enthusiasts and library technologists.
What is Paperless-ngx?
Paperless-ngx is a community-supported fork of the original Paperless project. It’s a document management system that:
- Allows scanning and uploading of documents
- Performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
- Supports metadata tagging
- Provides a full-text search engine
- Offers multi-user support and access control
Requirements
- A Linux system with Docker and Docker Compose installed
- Basic knowledge of Linux command line
- Around 2 GB of memory
- A dedicated directory for storing volumes and configuration
Step-by-Step Installation Guide
1. Install Docker if not, using this post
2. Create Your Project Directory
sudo mkdir -p /docker/paperless-ngx && cd /docker/paperless-ngx
3. Create Environment File
Create a .env file to store the environment variables:
sudo vim docker-compose.env
Paste the following:
PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY=change_this_to_a_long_random_secret
PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE=Asia/Kolkata
PAPERLESS_ADMIN_USER=admin
PAPERLESS_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin123
PAPERLESS_ADMIN_MAIL=admin@example.com
Important: Replace the PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY, admin credentials, and email with your own secure values.
4. Create Docker Compose File
sudo vim docker-compose.yml
Paste the following configuration:
services:
broker:
image: docker.io/library/redis:7
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- redisdata:/data
db:
image: docker.io/library/mariadb:11
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- dbdata:/var/lib/mysql
environment:
MARIADB_HOST: paperless
MARIADB_DATABASE: paperless
MARIADB_USER: paperless
MARIADB_PASSWORD: paperless
MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: paperless
webserver:
image: ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx:latest
restart: unless-stopped
depends_on:
- db
- broker
ports:
- "8000:8000"
volumes:
- data:/usr/src/paperless/data
- media:/usr/src/paperless/media
- ./export:/usr/src/paperless/export
- ./consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume
env_file: docker-compose.env
environment:
PAPERLESS_REDIS: redis://broker:6379
PAPERLESS_DBENGINE: mariadb
PAPERLESS_DBHOST: db
PAPERLESS_DBUSER: paperless
PAPERLESS_DBPASS: paperless
PAPERLESS_DBPORT: 3306
volumes:
data:
media:
dbdata:
redisdata:
5. Start the Services
Now it’s time to bring everything up:
sudo docker compose up -d
Check the status:
sudo docker compose ps
5. Access Your Paperless System
Open your browser and visit:
http://<your-server-ip>:8000
Login using the admin credentials you set in the .env file.
