Install Busabase on your own server

One container to try it, Compose when it goes to production. Everything below is copy-paste; nothing here needs a placeholder filled in first.

What the host needs

CPU

2 vCPU

Memory

2 GB

Disk

10 GB

Open port

3000 + 8333/tcp

Measured on a cold start with an empty volume: 24s to a healthy server, 548 MiB idle, 50 MB in /data after first boot. Two ports: the app, and object storage — the browser fetches attachments straight from storage, so it has to be reachable. Postgres stays inside the container.

docker run -d --name busabase \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -p 8333:8333 \
  -e APP_URL=http://localhost:3000 \
  -v busabase-data:/data \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  busabase/busabase-premium-allinone:latest

git clone https://github.com/busabase/busabase-premium.git
cd busabase-premium/compose

# Generates .env and seaweed-s3.json with matching random credentials.
# Doing this by hand is the single most common cause of "the app starts
# but every attachment upload fails".
./init.sh

BUSABASE_IMAGE=busabase/busabase-premium:latest docker compose up -d

git clone https://github.com/busabase/busabase-premium.git
helm install busabase ./busabase-premium/helm \
  --namespace busabase --create-namespace \
  --set image.tag=<version> \
  --set appUrl=https://busabase.company.internal

# Bring your own Postgres and S3 (recommended for production):
#   --set postgres.mode=external --set postgres.external.host=pg.company.internal
#   --set storage.mode=external  --set storage.publicHost=s3.company.internal

Check it worked

Do not guess from the container being up. Ask the server itself; it answers before anyone signs in.

curl -s http://localhost:3000/api/health

A healthy server replies with:

{"status":"ok","service":"busabase","version":"0.10.0", ...}

Activate your licence

Open the server, sign in as the administrator, and go to System Admin → Licence. Paste the activation code there; it is verified on the machine itself and needs no internet access. Codes are issued from your Busabase Cloud account under Settings → Self-hosted licence.

Installing on a network with no internet access

Move the image as a file. The tarball is about 489 MB; check the hash on arrival, because a truncated transfer surfaces much later as a confusing runtime error.

# On a machine with internet access
docker pull busabase/busabase-premium-allinone:latest
docker save busabase/busabase-premium-allinone:latest -o busabase-premium-allinone.tar
sha256sum busabase-premium-allinone.tar > busabase-premium-allinone.tar.sha256

# Move both files to the target host, then
sha256sum -c busabase-premium-allinone.tar.sha256
docker load -i busabase-premium-allinone.tar

It will not start

Collect a diagnostic bundle and send it to support@busabase.com. It contains logs, health output and image metadata — no credentials: the generated secrets are written to /data/.credentials and never logged.

docker logs --tail 500 busabase > sb-logs.txt 2>&1
curl -s http://localhost:3000/api/health > sb-health.json
docker inspect busabase --format '{{.Config.Image}} {{.State.Status}}' > sb-meta.txt
tar czf busabase-support.tar.gz sb-logs.txt sb-health.json sb-meta.txt

kubectl logs -l app.kubernetes.io/name=busabase-premium --tail=500 > sb-logs.txt
kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=busabase-premium -o wide > sb-pods.txt
tar czf busabase-support.tar.gz sb-logs.txt sb-pods.txt