Silo — Unraid Community Applications templates

Official Unraid Community Applications templates for Silo, a self-hosted media server for films and series.

Templates

Unraid's Community Applications installs one container per template — there is no Compose support. Silo's PostgreSQL dependency ships as a companion template because it requires PostgreSQL 18 with the pgvector extension. Redis does not require a Silo-specific image; install any Redis 6.2-or-newer container from Community Applications, or use an existing Redis service.

Install order

1. Silo-PostgreSQL — start it, confirm it is healthy
2. Redis 6.2+ — install a generic Redis container or use an existing Redis service
3. Silo — set SECRET_KEY, DATABASE_URL and REDIS_URL, then start

Redis is required. Silo will not start until it can reach both PostgreSQL and Redis. A dedicated Redis instance is recommended, particularly if you run more than one Silo server.

If you enable Unraid autostart, keep Redis and Silo-PostgreSQL ahead of Silo in Docker startup order and configure a short wait after PostgreSQL. Silo exits when either dependency is still unavailable; start it again once both services are ready.

Choose a unique POSTGRES_PASSWORD when installing Silo-PostgreSQL; no password is supplied by the template. Use that same password in Silo's DATABASE_URL. If the password contains reserved URL characters, percent-encode them in the connection string. DATABASE_URL and REDIS_URL show as visible placeholders/examples in the Unraid form, not masked fields — replace them with your own values before starting the container. Because DATABASE_URL is unmasked, the database password appears in plaintext in the Unraid template/configuration.

Networking note

Containers on Unraid's default bridge network cannot resolve each other by name. The DATABASE_URL example and REDIS_URL default contain a literal YOUR-UNRAID-IP placeholder that must be replaced with the server's LAN IP address. Substituting the Compose-style hostnames (postgres, redis) will not work.

Users who prefer name resolution can create a custom Docker network and attach all three containers to it.

Media path

The template maps /mnt/user/data to the identical /mnt/user/data path inside Silo and mounts it read-only. Keep films and series beneath that root, then add the relevant subdirectories as libraries in Silo.

SECRET_KEY

Silo refuses to start without SECRET_KEY (see internal/config/bootstrap.go). Generate one from an Unraid terminal:

openssl rand -base64 48

Back it up separately from database dumps — losing it makes encrypted secrets unrecoverable.

Persistent data

The Silo container uses one appdata mapping: /mnt/user/appdata/silo on the host to /var/lib/silo in the container. It covers installed plugins, compatibility assets and other local Silo state. Back it up together with the separate Silo-PostgreSQL data directory and your SECRET_KEY.

Hardware transcoding

Hardware acceleration is optional; CPU-only hosts install without any GPU settings.

For Intel or AMD, if /dev/dri exists on the Unraid host, enable Advanced View and add --device=/dev/dri:/dev/dri to Extra Parameters. Do not add an empty Device entry: DockerMan renders that as the invalid argument --device=''. Device exposure has been smoke-tested on an AMD Hawk Point iGPU; a configured media library is still required to exercise an actual transcode.

For NVIDIA NVENC/NVDEC:

1. Install the Nvidia-Driver plugin from Community Applications and reboot if prompted.
2. Open the plugin settings and copy the desired GPU UUID.
3. Edit the Silo container with Advanced View enabled and add --runtime=nvidia to Extra Parameters.
4. Enter the UUID in NVIDIA GPU UUID (or use all). Leave NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES set to compute,video,utility.

Silo's default auto hardware-acceleration mode detects the exposed NVIDIA device and selects NVENC. The template does not force the NVIDIA runtime because doing so would prevent Silo from starting on hosts without the plugin/runtime installed.

Manual template installation

Copy the XML onto the Unraid flash drive to make the templates available from the Docker tab:

cp templates/*.xml /boot/config/plugins/dockerMan/templates-user/

License

The template XML and repository documentation are MIT licensed. The Silo name, logo, icons, and other brand assets are © 2026 Silo Media L.L.C. and are not included in the MIT license; see NOTICE.txt and TRADEMARK.md. Silo server source code is AGPL-3.0-or-later.