Rustdesk in docker
guide-by-example
Purpose & Overview
Remote desktop application.
Rustdesk is a young opensource replacement for TeamViewer or Anydesk. The major thing is that it does NAT punching, and lets you host all the infrastructure for it to function.
Written in rust(gasp), with Dart and Flutter framework for client side.
Files and directory structure
/home/
└── ~/
└── docker/
└── rustdesk/
├── data/
├── .env
└── docker-compose.yml
data/- servers persistent data, contains sqlite database and the api key.env- a file containing environment variables for docker composedocker-compose.yml- a docker compose file, telling docker how to run the containers
You only need to provide the two files.
The directory is created by docker compose on the first run.
docker-compose
Using an edited version of S6-overlay based compose.
It's a simpler, single container approach, without the noise of hbbs/hbbr,
it also has health check implemented.
There is also no network section since its fine to run this completely isolated.
docker-compose.yml
services:
rustdesk:
image: rustdesk/rustdesk-server-s6:latest
container_name: rustdesk
hostname: rustdesk
restart: unless-stopped
env_file: .env
ports:
- 21115:21115
- 21116:21116
- 21116:21116/udp
- 21117:21117
- 21118:21118
- 21119:21119
volumes:
- ./data:/data
.env
# GENERAL
MY_DOMAIN=example.com
DOCKER_MY_NETWORK=caddy_net
TZ=Europe/Bratislava
# RUSTDESK
RELAY=rust.example.com:21117
ENCRYPTED_ONLY=0
Port forwarding
the ports 21115 - 21119 needs to be open for tcp
the port 21116 is tcp and udp
The usage on clients
- download and install the client apps from the official site
- three dots near ID > ID/Relay Server > ID Server: rust.example.com > OK
- the green dot at the bottom should stay green saying "ready"
- done
- in the docker server logs you should see machines public IP and ID code it was given
Encrypted use
For encrypted communication and to prevent undesirables access to the server
- the encryption public key is on the docker host:
~/docker/rustdesk/data/id_ed25519.pub - you can manually add it to any client application
three dots near ID > ID/Relay Server > Key: 3AVva64bn1ea2vsDuOuQH3i8+2M= - to only allow clients with the key on server:
in the env_file setENCRYPTED_ONLY=1and down and up the copose.
On windows
one can deploy client with these settings by renaming
the installation file to: rustdesk-host=<host-ip-or-name>,key=<public-key-string>.exe
example: rustdesk-host=rust.example.com,key=3AVva64bn1ea2vsDuOuQH3i8+2M=.exe
If by chance the key contains symbols not usable in windows filenames,
down the container, delete the files id_ed25519 and id_ed25519.pub, up the container
Trouble shooting
From what I read, most client side issues are with two differently set rustdesk
clients running on the same machine.
Uninstall/remove all all, plus:
C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Roaming\RustDesk%AppData%\RustDesk
restart and do fresh client install
Update
Manual image update:
docker-compose pulldocker-compose up -ddocker image prune
Backup and restore
Backup
Using borg that makes daily snapshot of the entire directory.
Restore
- down the bookstack containers
docker-compose down - delete the entire bookstack directory
- from the backup copy back the bookstack directory
- start the containers
docker-compose up -d



