Updates

Automating Docker Updates: Watchtower vs Diun vs Manual Strategies Your homelab is running smoothly. Twenty containers, all humming along. Then a CVE drops for one of your images, and you realize you haven’t updated anything in three months. Docker containers don’t update themselves. Unlike desktop apps with auto-update prompts or Linux packages with apt upgrade, containers stay pinned to whatever image you pulled at deploy time. Without a strategy, your self-hosted stack slowly drifts into a graveyard of outdated software. ...

Self-Hosting Diun: Docker Image Update Notifications You’re running twenty Docker containers. One of them just got a critical security patch upstream. How long until you notice? If you’re using Watchtower, the answer is “automatically — it’ll update itself.” But automatic updates aren’t always what you want. Maybe you run a database that needs careful migration steps. Maybe you’ve been burned by a breaking change at 3 AM. Maybe you just want to know before you act. ...

One of the hidden maintenance costs of self-hosting is keeping everything updated. When you’re running 10, 20, or 50 Docker containers, manually pulling new images and recreating containers gets old fast. Miss an update and you might be running a version with known security vulnerabilities. Watchtower solves this by automatically monitoring your running containers, pulling new images when they’re available, and gracefully restarting containers with the same configuration. Set it up once, and your homelab stays current without you lifting a finger. ...