Files needed for deployment of Overleaf into the exo-docker environment.
Note
I was originally modifying the docker-compose.yml file directly, but when I recently wanted to install more LaTeX packeges, I realized I could just use docker-compose.override.yml and avoid modifying Overleaf's own docker-compose file.
Overleaf can be customized and launched via Docker. In this case I am deploying in a Docker environment that used Traefik to manage the virtual hosts
and automatically handle Let's Encrypt certificates, so I needed to modify the official overleaf/overleaf docker-compose.yml; to acomplish this I added a docker-compose.override.yml.
The docker-compose.override.yml is automatically applied when running docker compose up.
If you are handling virtual hosts with a proxy like Traefik or Nginx, then you might need to reset the port binding of the sharrelatex container.
Port 80 is already bound by Traefik on my server, so I needed to override the ports for sharelatex. This can be done like so:
ports: !reset []
This is more or less the only needed change to run Overleaf in a Traefik environment.
When I first installed Overleaf and tried to use various packages, I was surprised to find they were missing.
Packages can be installed by running these commands once the Overleaf environment is running:
docker exec -it sharelatex bash
wget https://mirror.ctan.org/systems/texlive/tlnet/update-tlmgr-latest.sh
sh update-tlmgr-latest.sh
This may be needed to update the TeX Live environment, which is installed inside the container.
Now we can install missing packages like so:
tlmgr install titling
To make the changes persist between restarts, I created a custom dockerfile, exooverleaf.dockerfile, and added it to the docker-compose.override.yml file.
Various errors I encountered while developing my docker-compose.override.yml.
failed to set up container networking: driver failed programming external connectivity on endpoint sharelatex ... Bind for 0.0.0.0:80 failed: port is already allocated
This happens because sharelatex is already bound to port 80, in order to fix it you can simply override the port in docker-compose.override.yml:
ports: !reset []
Note
It is not enough to simply write ports: [], and so, the docker-compose.override.yml actually does not work like you would intuitively expect it to. Instead we are forced to use YAML tags !reset and !override, as documented here: https://docs.docker.com/reference/compose-file/merge/#replace-value
After this, if you use Traefik, you should just use "Expose" instead, which will expose the port only internally.
Conflict. The container name "/redis" is already in use by container ...
This can happen when you already have a service that uses the container_name redis, and it can be easily fixed by overriding it in docker-compose.override.yml:
redis:
networks:
- overleaf_network_internal
container_name: overleaf-redis
volumes:
- ~/redis_data:/data
Sorry, something went wrong and your project could not be compiled. Please try again in a few moments.
According to some online discussions, this might happen due to connectivity issues, and refreshing the browser should fix it. However, this was not the case for me.
For me, this error was shown in the front-end because the file permissions had somehow changed inside my container, and both of these:
/var/lib/overleaf/data/compiles//var/lib/overleaf/data/output/
Had somehow become owned by ubuntu instead of www-data. I fixed it by running these commands inside my container:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/overleaf/data/compiles/*
chmod -R 755 /var/lib/overleaf/data/compiles/*
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/overleaf/data/output/*
chmod -R 755 /var/lib/overleaf/data/output/*
But, this could also happen if your TeX Live installation has somehow been messed up.
E.g. ChatGPT originally suggested to me that I volume mounted ~/texlive_data:/usr/local/texlive to make newly installed packages persist between restarts; it would work in theory, but it will be completely cleared and you will have to reinstall everything that was already installed in the sharelatex image, or install TeX Live on your host. Not ideal.
Instead, I settled on creating a custom dockerfile where I install additional packeges not included in the base sharelatex image.