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deannos edited this page Apr 26, 2026 · 1 revision

Installation

This page covers every supported way to run NotifyQ.

Prerequisites

Local build

Requirement Version Notes
Go 1.25+
C toolchain any gcc on Linux/Windows, clang on macOS (Xcode CLI tools)
git any

CGO must be enabled because the SQLite driver (mattn/go-sqlite3) compiles a C library.

macOS:

xcode-select --install

Ubuntu / Debian:

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential

Alpine Linux:

apk add --no-cache gcc musl-dev

Docker

  • Docker Engine 20.10+ (no local Go toolchain needed)

Option 1 — Build from source

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/deannos/notification-queue.git
cd notification-queue

# Configure
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env — at minimum set JWT_SECRET

# Run (builds UI + starts server)
make run

The server listens on http://localhost:8080 by default.

To compile a standalone binary:

make build        # outputs ./notifyq
./notifyq

make build requires the Vite toolchain to build the embedded UI. If you only want the Go binary without rebuilding the UI, run:

CGO_ENABLED=1 go build -o notifyq .

Option 2 — Docker

# Build the image
docker build -t notifyq .

# Run
docker run -d \
  --name notifyq \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v notifyq-data:/data \
  -e JWT_SECRET=your-random-secret \
  -e DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASS=changeme \
  -e ENV=production \
  notifyq

The SQLite database is written to /data/notifications.db inside the container. The named volume notifyq-data persists it across container restarts.

Option 3 — Docker Compose

Create a docker-compose.yml:

services:
  notifyq:
    image: notifyq          # or build: . to build locally
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - notifyq-data:/data
    environment:
      ENV: production
      JWT_SECRET: ${JWT_SECRET}
      DEFAULT_ADMIN_USER: admin
      DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASS: ${ADMIN_PASS}
      ALLOW_REGISTRATION: "false"
      RETENTION_DAYS: "30"

volumes:
  notifyq-data:
# Create a .env file with secrets
echo "JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)" >> .env
echo "ADMIN_PASS=strongpassword" >> .env

docker compose up -d

First run

On startup NotifyQ will:

  1. Open (or create) the SQLite database at DATABASE_PATH.
  2. Run schema migrations automatically.
  3. Create the admin user defined by DEFAULT_ADMIN_USER / DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASS if no users exist.

Open http://localhost:8080 and log in:

Username Password
admin (value of DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASS)

Change the admin password immediately in any internet-facing deployment.

Verifying the installation

curl http://localhost:8080/health
# {"status":"ok"}

Next steps

Clone this wiki locally