Garage, a lightweight, S3-compatible distributed object store, plus its web admin panel, bundled into one container for Unraid. Both are the official upstream binaries, unmodified, wired together with s6-overlay. No manual CLI setup: single-node layout, S3 key and bucket are all created automatically on first boot.

A one-knight job: I build it, keep it running, work through the issues and add what people ask for, until nothing is missing. It is free, with no accounts, no telemetry, no ads and no paid tier. No asterisk anywhere. Nothing readable ever leaves your own walls. Forged on evenings and weekends, with heart and stubbornness.

If it has earned a place on your server or computer, toss a coin to your knight: it helps cover the costs and keeps the project alive. It also makes this knight's heart beat a little faster. Three ways below, whichever suits you.

Table of Contents

1. Why one container?
2. What is this?
3. Quick Start on Unraid
4. Connecting a client
5. Configuration
6. Backup
7. How AI is used here
8. Support this project

1. Why one container?

Garage's own Community Applications listings are split across three separate templates from one maintainer: the core server (in two network variants) and the web admin panel as its own install. This template bundles the core server and the admin panel into one container, both official, unmodified upstream binaries with no rebuild from source, so one install gives you a working, browsable S3 store.

2. What is this?

Garage is a lightweight, S3-API-compatible object store built for small, geo-distributed self-hosted deployments: Rust, Apache-2.0, actively developed. This template runs it in single-node mode (Garage's own --single-node flag, introduced in v2.3.0), which auto-creates the cluster layout at startup. The manual garage layout assign / garage layout apply steps a bare install normally requires are not needed here. An S3 access key, secret key and bucket are pre-seeded from the template fields on first boot (Garage's --default-access-key / --default-bucket flags), so there is no second CLI step to create them either.

garage-webui runs alongside it, talking to Garage's admin API over localhost. Buckets, keys and cluster health are all browsable without touching a terminal.

3. Quick Start on Unraid

1. Install from Community Applications, or add this template's URL directly: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junkerderprovinz/garage/main/templates/garage.xml
2. Set Access Key and Secret Key. Anything reasonably random works, e.g. generate a secret with openssl rand -hex 24.
3. Optionally set Bucket to a name you want created immediately (e.g. backups).
4. Start the container. The S3 endpoint is http://SERVER_IP:3900; the admin panel is at http://SERVER_IP:3909.

Watch the container log for GARAGE IS READY. First boot generates the config and layout, which takes a few seconds.

4. Connecting a client

Any S3-compatible tool works. A couple of common ones:

rclone (rclone config, or a config file entry):

[garage]
type = s3
provider = Other
access_key_id = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
secret_access_key = YOUR_SECRET_KEY
endpoint = http://SERVER_IP:3900
region = garage

restic (repository URL):

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=YOUR_SECRET_KEY
restic -r s3:http://SERVER_IP:3900/my-restic-repo init

5. Configuration

Ports 3901 (Garage's internal RPC) and 3903 (the admin API garage-webui talks to) are intentionally not published, because nothing outside the container needs them directly.

6. Backup

Everything lives under the Data and Config mounts. Back both up the same way you back up any other appdata folder. Losing Config does not lose your objects, but it does regenerate the RPC secret and admin token on next boot, which breaks the admin panel's stored session and (for a real multi-node cluster, not this single-node setup) cluster membership.

7. How AI is used here

One knight builds this, and AI is one of the tools I work with, the same way I work with an editor or a compiler. It helps me write code and documentation and it checks my work, and that saves me a good many evenings. It does not make the decisions, though. I read and understand everything before it ships, and if something here breaks, that is on me and not on the tool.

You do not have to take my word for it. The code is open and every release note is written by hand. The issue tracker shows how problems actually get handled, including the ones I got wrong the first time. If you find something that is not right, open an issue and I will look at it.

8. Support this project

Questions? Check the support thread. Bugs, ideas or feature requests? Please open a GitHub issue.

A one-knight job: I build it, keep it running, work through the issues and add what people ask for, until nothing is missing. It is free, with no accounts, no telemetry, no ads and no paid tier. No asterisk anywhere. Nothing readable ever leaves your own walls. Forged on evenings and weekends, with heart and stubbornness.

If it has earned a place on your server or computer, toss a coin to your knight: it helps cover the costs and keeps the project alive. It also makes this knight's heart beat a little faster. Three ways below, whichever suits you.