How to Install Affine Workspace Notes App in Your Homelab Step-by-Step Tutorial

Affine Hardware Requirements

100 MB storage space growth per 1k documents with 1k words per document, so you decide how much you think you'll need (leave around 10 gigs for the OS/docker too).
4 Cores (you can set 4 cores), but it will rarely use them unless you are actively performing hard tasks.
4 GB of RAM (for docs with over 10K words or 2GB for more normal usage).
A reverse proxy, we will use the Nginx Proxy Manager from our video you can find here

Create LXC on Proxmox

Go ahead and create an LXC within your Proxmox environment with the recommended settings above.

Install Docker/Docker Compose

Install using the apt repo.

# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

Install the Docker packages.

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Verify that the installation is successful by running the hello-world image:

sudo docker run hello-world

Verify the compose version:

docker compose version

Installing Affine

It is best practice to create a dedicated directory for each Docker container to better backup data.

mkdir affine
cd affine

We are going to download the latest version of Affine

wget -O docker-compose.yml https://github.com/toeverything/affine/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml

A .env A file is required to configure Docker volumes, mapping them to a specific location where the user data will be persisted, and other required environment variables.

wget -O .env https://github.com/toeverything/affine/releases/latest/download/default.env.example

Editing the .env file

Here is the default install you will see when you open the Affine .env file

# select a revision to deploy, available values: stable, beta, canary
AFFINE_REVISION=stable

# set the port for the server container it will expose the server on
PORT=3010

# set the host for the server for outgoing links
# AFFINE_SERVER_HTTPS=true
# AFFINE_SERVER_HOST=affine.yourdomain.com
# or
# AFFINE_SERVER_EXTERNAL_URL=https://affine.yourdomain.com

# position of the database data to persist
DB_DATA_LOCATION=~/.affine/self-host/postgres/pgdata
# position of the upload data(images, files, etc.) to persist
UPLOAD_LOCATION=~/.affine/self-host/storage
# position of the configuration files to persist
CONFIG_LOCATION=~/.affine/self-host/config

# database credentials
DB_USERNAME=affine
DB_PASSWORD=
DB_DATABASE=affine

You can access this configuration file with nano within your Affine directory

nano .env

Change the following variables and uncomment them by removing the # (pound sign) so you can access Affine exclusively over a secure connection:

AFFINE_SERVER_HTTPS=true
AFFINE_SERVER_HOST=affine.yourdomain.com

Now we can start Affine with the following Docker command:

docker compose down
docker compose up -d

Adding Affine to Nginx Proxy Manager

Log in to your Nginx Proxy Manager and perform the following:

Select hosts from the top
Select proxy hosts
Select Add proxy host top right
Input the URL you set earlier in the .env file
Add the IP address and put port 3010
Leave the HTTP option as is
Turn on websockets support
Go to the SSL tab and add your SSL certificate
Select save
Now, click the domain name in your

You Will Log in with:

You will log in to the Affine admin with the /admin subpage or the normal page without it:

http://<ip>:3010/admin

Accept Affine Cloud

This error is not very clear, because this is self-hosted, it does not realize you are not connected to the cloud, so when it says sink with the cloud, it means it will store your data within your PostgreSQL database locally, because that is what is set in our config files by default.

Upgrading Affine

If you ever need to update to the latest release, you can follow their documentation here

All their related documentation can be found here

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