Add installation guide for Dawarich on Unraid

[Pa7rickStar]

This pull request adds a comprehensive installation guide for setting up Dawarich on Unraid.

Important notice: This guide utilizes two new Community Applications (CA) templates for Unraid (for PostGIS and redis databases), created by Pa7rickStar. These Applications are not listed in the Unraid Community Applications store yet, because they are still under review. Due to the vast experience the maintainer of the other two CA templates it would make sense to ask him to review this guide before merging.

New Dawarich Unraid Installation Documentation:

• Step-by-step guide for installing Dawarich on Unraid: Details the setup process for all required containers (dawarich_db, dawarich_redis, dawarich_app, dawarich_sidekiq), including configuration recommendations.
• Instructions for creating and preserving a user-defined Docker network: Explains how to set up a bridge network for container isolation and how to configure Unraid to preserve custom networks.
• Translating Dawarich docker-compose file to Unraid templates: Includes commands and explanations for checking container health and the custom network which is often omitted in Unraid setups.
• Support for Unraid related questions: Provides links to relevant forums and repositories for community support, as the Dawarich developer does not maintain Unraid templates.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Documentation
  • Added a comprehensive guide for installing Dawarich on Unraid using CA templates or Docker Compose.
  • Documents required services, supported installation methods, prerequisites (network/templates), recommended startup order, environment variables, port mappings, health checks, and restart policies.
  • Provides step-by-step installation, post-install verification (health checks, logs), Unraid-specific notes, memory overcommit caveats, and troubleshooting tips.

[coderabbitai[bot]]

Walkthrough

Adds a new Unraid installation guide for Dawarich documenting required containers (dawarich_db, dawarich_redis, dawarich_app, dawarich_sidekiq), supported installation methods (CA templates, Docker Compose), prerequisites, configuration details, sequencing, networking notes, health checks, and post-install verification steps.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Documentation: Unraid install guide docs/How_to_install_Dawarich_on_Unraid.md	New document providing a comprehensive step‑by‑step guide to install Dawarich on Unraid, covering required containers, environment variables, ports, health checks, restart policies, network options, sequencing, startup verification, log inspection, and Unraid‑specific caveats (memory overcommit, CA template notes).

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~3 minutes

Poem

I hop through stacks of Docker light,
setting envs and ports just right;
DB and Redis line the track,
App and Sidekiq bring jobs back.
Dawarich wakes — containers bright. 🐇✨

Pre-merge checks and finishing touches

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title Check	✅ Passed	The title "Add installation guide for Dawarich on Unraid" succinctly describes the main change—introducing a new installation guide for Unraid—and aligns with the documentation addition in this PR. It avoids unnecessary detail while clearly communicating the core update.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changes. Docstring coverage check skipped.

✨ Finishing touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• [ ] Create PR with unit tests
• [ ] Post copyable unit tests in a comment

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📜 Recent review details

Configuration used: CodeRabbit UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between a046fdbbf23a48b293354cb8bdc66463ce87513f and 174a4bf5b6403dcfcf2094c1c1dede0c775015c8.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• docs/How_to_install_Dawarich_on_Unraid.md (1 hunks)

✅ Files skipped from review due to trivial changes (1)

• docs/How_to_install_Dawarich_on_Unraid.md

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_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands and usage tips.}

[Pa7rickStar]

• Fixed: wording of a few sentences.
• Fixed: Broken link to unraid docs.
• Implemented suggestions from @nwithan8.
• Added: Privacy warnings due to the default values for PHOTON_API_HOST in the dawarich_app and dawarich_sidekiq Unraid CA templates.
• Added: Guide on how to setup the Photon CA I created for reverse geocoding.

@Freika My repository for the Unraid Community AppStore is finally approved and the containers are online. This guide can go live 🥳

Beste Grüße aus Bayern!

[Freika]

Hey @Pa7rickStar, can I ask you to create a topic in our forum instead? It would be easier to update and discuss there: https://discourse.dawarich.app/c/community-guides/8

Thank you!

[Pa7rickStar]

The unRAID community is posting guides, etc. on their forum as well. Especially Community Applications (mostly Docker containers with an easy GUI to set up) have to have a forum thread where the app is announced and support can be given. I personally think this approach ist the worst for several reasons:

• Fragmentation of information: People have to check the docs, GitHub issues, GitHub discussions, GitHub wikis, community forums and Discord servers. No wonder most people just ask instead of searching first. And it's not great for maintaining as well (like the not up to date dawarich docs on telemetry).
• Fragmentation of Information II: Clarifications, updates or extensions of guides by other users are posted in the forum thread so either the original author updates his guide or people have to read a whole thread with questions and answers in between updates just to get the whole guide.
• Loss of Information: When people delete their accounts or posts (like so many reddit posts where the question is still there but the answer was deleted 🤦‍♂️), maintainers become inactive, servers (happens with discord servers a lot) or websites get shut down Information which could have stayed in a public archive or be maintained by others are gone forever.
• Lack of version control: Changes are often not tracked or can't be inspected by users, so after a few years (like in many threads on the unRAID forum) initial posts (e.g. containing the guide) have been edited so often that most of the replays in a thread don't make sense anymore.
• Difficult to collaborate: I probably won't be able to support or extend the guide regularly. So if someone want's to do so on a forum, they will have to "steal" it and start a new thread with their updated version (I'm 100% fine with that). On GitHub they could just create a PR. References to the guide won't have to be updated and people won't accidentally find the old outdated version.
• Sub-Thread-Hell: Topic specific forum threads like a dawarich on unRAID thread are often a mess because people ask all the unRAID related questions in one thread which is the opposite of what a thread is supposed to be. This leads to a dilemma when having a question: You can either ask questions which had been asked and answered multiple times before or you have to read hundreds of mostly unrelated and therefore hard to follow forum posts.
• Searchabilty: Most forums don't have a good search engine (especially because they are intended to find threads and not topics inside threads). AI crawlers do crawl GitHub a lot and threat it as a "high quality source" of information, which makes Github content more likely to be served to people asking AI Chatbots or using AI summaries in search engines.

I get the idea of building a dawarich community forum. I really do. I was even going to post this there. But then I went for GitHub discussions instead, because there is much more activity (probably because people don't have to create a separate user account). I'd personally kill the forum while you can and use GitHub discussions instead (or kill those if you want to maintain your own forum).

Sorry for the rant 😇 It's your project and I am grateful you are doing it open source! If your forum can process markdown inputs (so I don't have to reformat the whole thing) I will post the guide on the forums if you want me to.

[Freika]

As an option, you can create a topic on our forum with the link to the one on Unraid forums that is being actively updated and maintained, totally fine by me.

My personal problem with community guides making it to the official docs is that I'll have to maintain it.

If I have the expertise, I'll have to "merely" make a proper review of changes, maybe try to reproduce them. Considering I have little time to spare, guides won't be reviewed as fast as they should be.

If I don't have the expertise, like with Unraid, I'll have to merge the PR blindly, and people will rely on it as if I checked it and it worked, even though it's not the case.

Community guides posted by their authors on the forum are lifting this unnecessary responsibility from me.

Another thing is that the forum should become a place for non non-tech-savvy community as well, i.e. Cloud users. There is no way people who want to just use the product will register on Github to get help. Our Discord community proved to be very useful, so extending it to the forum feels only natural to me, and it also opens it for indexing by search engines.

The forum works with markdown well, so you can either post the guide on the forum, or, if you see it more convenient and making more sense, just create a topic there with the link, as I suggested above.

And also — thank you!