Obsidian

What is Obsidian?

Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base and note-taking application built on top of a local folder of plain Markdown files. It lets you create, link, and organize notes into a personal knowledge graph, with a rich plugin ecosystem of 1,000+ community plugins and themes to customize your workflow.

This Coolify template runs Obsidian as a Linux desktop container using the LinuxServer.io image. The application streams a full graphical desktop to your browser over HTTPS - there is nothing to install on your local machine. Your vault lives in a named Docker volume on your server and persists across container updates.

System Requirements

Obsidian runs as an Electron/Chromium application inside the container and streams video to your browser. It is more resource-intensive than a typical web app.

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	2 cores	4 cores
RAM	2 GB	4 GB
Disk	1 GB	4 GB+ (scales with vault size)
Architecture	x86-64 or arm64	x86-64

Note

1 GB of the container's RAM is reserved as shared memory (shm_size) for Chromium. On a host with less than 2 GB free, the container will crash on startup.

GPU acceleration (Intel, AMD, or Nvidia) is supported for lower CPU usage and better streaming quality but is not required. See the LinuxServer documentation for GPU setup details.

Deploying Obsidian

In Coolify, go to Services and search for Obsidian.
Click Deploy. Coolify auto-generates a secure username and password - no configuration is required for a basic deployment.
Once the container is running, click the Open button to launch Obsidian in your browser.
When prompted by your browser for credentials, use the CUSTOM_USER and PASSWORD values shown in the Coolify environment variables panel.

First-Time Setup

On first launch you will see the Obsidian vault picker screen inside the browser window.

Click Open folder as vault and navigate to a folder inside /config - for example /config/vault. This location is inside the persistent Docker volume and will survive container updates.
Obsidian will open your vault. Install plugins and themes as you normally would - everything written to /config is persisted.

Security Notes

Heads up

This container provides privileged access. Do not expose it to the internet without authentication.

The GUI includes a built-in terminal with passwordless sudo. Anyone who can reach the URL has full root control inside the container.
Authentication is enabled by default via HTTP Basic Auth (CUSTOM_USER / PASSWORD). For internet-facing deployments, consider placing an additional authentication layer (such as Authelia or Authentik) in front of the service.
The container requires seccomp=unconfined on older host kernels. If your host is running a modern Linux kernel (5.15+), you can remove the security_opt block from the compose file for a tighter security profile.

Accessing Your Credentials

Your auto-generated login credentials are stored as Coolify environment variables. To view or change them:

Open the service in Coolify and click the Environment Variables tab.
Look for CUSTOM_USER and PASSWORD.
After changing either value, click Save and then Redeploy for the changes to take effect.

Updating Obsidian

The LinuxServer image bundles the Obsidian version - to update, pull the latest image and recreate the container. Your vault data in the obsidian-config volume is unaffected.

In Coolify, click Pull Latest Image and then Redeploy.