Installation

Run Vectana on your own server with Docker Compose and create the first administrator.

Vectana runs from the image published on Docker Hub, heki0824/vectana (linux/amd64 and linux/arm64), with Docker Compose.

Requirements

A Linux server with Docker and Docker Compose v2 (1 GB of memory or more recommended)
Outbound HTTPS from the server (Vectana queries api.osv.dev and endoflife.date)
A domain and a way to serve it over HTTPS, such as a reverse proxy or Cloudflare Tunnel (see Publishing)
An SMTP server for invitation and notification emails (optional to start; see Email)

What runs

One image runs as four containers, each with its own job.

Service	Job
`db`	PostgreSQL 18. Data lives in the `db-data` volume
`migrate`	Brings the database schema up to date on start, then exits
`app`	The web app and API, listening on `127.0.0.1:8000`
`worker`	Checks every package on start and then periodically, and sends notifications

Install

Get the files

Create a directory on the server and download compose.prod.yaml and the settings template.

mkdir -p /srv/vectana && cd /srv/vectana
curl -fsSLo compose.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/techolve/vectana/main/compose.prod.yaml
curl -fsSLo .env https://raw.githubusercontent.com/techolve/vectana/main/.env.example
chmod 600 .env

Edit .env

At minimum, set these values.

VECTANA_VERSION=1.0.0
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=(a random string)
SECRET_KEY=(output of openssl rand -hex 32)
WEB_URL=https://vectana.example.com
GROUP_NAME=Example Group

Generate random values with:

openssl rand -hex 24   # for POSTGRES_PASSWORD
openssl rand -hex 32   # for SECRET_KEY

app refuses to start without SECRET_KEY. See Email for mail and Configuration for every setting.

Start it

docker compose up -d
docker compose ps

You’re good when db is healthy, migrate has exited with code 0, and app and worker are running.

curl http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/health
# {"status":"ok","version":"1.0.0"}

Create the first administrator

Create a group admin. You’ll be asked for a password.

docker compose exec app python -m app.cli create-admin \
  --email you@example.com --name "Admin" --company "Example Inc."

With --company, a parent company with that name is created too, and the admin belongs to it.

Publish it and log in

Point your WEB_URL domain at 127.0.0.1:8000 as described in Publishing, open it in a browser and log in. Then create companies and departments under Organization and invite your users.

Logs

docker compose logs -f app       # web app and API
docker compose logs -f worker    # scheduled checks and notifications ("Scanned ... package(s)")

To run a check once, right now:

docker compose run --rm worker python -m app.worker --once