Docker image for TP-Link Omada Controller to control TP-Link Omada Hardware
For references on running a legacy v3 or v4 controller, see the README for v3 and v4. See the tag archive_v3_v4 for a snapshot of the code that includes the v3 and v4 artifacts as they have been removed as of July 2, 2024.
- Image Tags
- Getting Help & Reporting Issues
- Best Practices for Operation
- Building Images
- Example Usage
- Optional Variables
- Persistent Data
- Custom Certificates
- MongoDB Small Files
- Time Zones
- Unprivileged Ports
- Using Docker Compose
- Omada Controller API Documentation
- Known Issues
armv7l
(32 bit) images. Upgrade your operating system to arm64
(64 bit) unless you accept that you're running an outdated MongoDB and a base operating system with unpatched vulnerabilities! See the Known Issues readme for more information.
For a full tag list, search the Docker Hub tags list. The following tags have multi-arch support for amd64
, armv7l
, and arm64
and will automatically pull the correct tag based on your system's architecture:
Tag(s) | Major.Minor Release | Current Version |
---|---|---|
latest , 5.14 |
Omada Controller 5.14.x |
5.14.26.1 |
beta , beta-5.14 |
Omada Controller beta |
5.14.30.7 |
5.13 |
Omada Controller 5.13.x |
5.13.30.8 |
5.12 |
Omada Controller 5.12.x |
5.12.7 |
Note: These are currently published for the amd64
architecture only. These tags extend the tags above to add Chromium which is required to generate reports from the controller.
Tag(s) | Major.Minor Release |
---|---|
latest-chromium , 5.14-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.14.x |
beta-chromium , |
Omada Controller beta |
5.13-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.13.x |
5.12-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.12.x |
If for some reason you can't use the multi-arch tags, there are explicitly tagged images with the architecture (-amd64
, -arm64
, and -armv7l
) appended to them. Check Docker Hub for the full list of tags.
If you need a specific version of the controller, starting with 5.13 and 5.14, there are explicitly tagged images with the exact version (i.e. - 5.14.26.1
) in the tag name. Check Docker Hub for the full list of tags.
These images are still published on Docker Hub but are no longer regularly updated due to the controller software no longer being updated. Use with extreme caution as these images are likely to contain unpatched security vulnerabilities!. See Archived Tags for v3 and v4 for details on the old, unmaintained image tags.
Tag(s) | Major.Minor Release | Current Version |
---|---|---|
5.9 |
Omada Controller 5.9.x |
5.9.31 |
5.9-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.9.x |
5.9.31 |
5.8 |
Omada Controller 5.8.x |
5.8.4 |
5.8-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.8.x |
5.8.4 |
5.7 |
Omada Controller 5.7.x |
5.7.4 |
5.7-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.7.x |
5.7.4 |
5.6 |
Omada Controller 5.6.x |
5.6.3 |
5.6-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.6.x |
5.6.3 |
5.5 |
Omada Controller 5.5.x |
5.5.6 |
5.5-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.5.x |
5.5.6 |
5.4 |
Omada Controller 5.4.x |
5.4.6 |
5.4-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.4.x |
5.4.6 |
5.3 |
Omada Controller 5.3.x |
5.3.1 |
5.3-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.3.x |
5.3.1 |
5.1 |
Omada Controller 5.1.x |
5.1.7 |
5.1-chromium |
Omada Controller 5.1.x |
5.1.7 |
5.0 |
Omada Controller 5.0.x |
5.0.30 |
If you have issues running the controller, feel free to create a Help discussion and I will help as I can. If you are specifically having a problem that is related to the actual software, I would suggest filing an issue on the TP-Link community forums as I do not have access to source code to debug those issues. If you're not sure where the problem might be, I can help determine if it is a running in Docker issue or a software issue. If you're certain you have found a bug, create a Bug Report Issue.
While you can take backups of your controller by making a copy of the persistent data, the chance of data corruption exists if you do so while the container is running as there is a database used for persistence. The best way to take backups is to use the automatic backup capabilities within the controller itself. Go to Settings
> Maintenance
> Backup
and scroll down to Auto Backup
to enable and configure the feature. These backups can be restored as a part of the installation process on a clean controller install.
Backups can also be taken manually on the same screen as the auto backup settings. This would be ideal to do before you perform an upgrade to ensure that you are able to roll back in case of issues upon upgrade as you can not move from a newer version of the controller to an older version! It will break the database and require you to do a full reinstall!
Before performing and upgrade, I would suggest taking a backup through the controller itself. Controller upgrades are done by stopping the existing container gracefully (see the note below on this topic), removing the existing container, and running a new container with the new version of the controller. This can be done manually, with compose, or with manby other 3rd party tools which auto-update containers.
When stopping your container in order to upgrade the controller, make sure to allow the MongoDB enough time to safely shutdown. This is done using docker stop -t <value>
where <value>
is a number in seconds, such as 60, which should allow the controller to cleanly shutdown. Database corruption has been observed when not cleanly shut down. The docker run
and compose examples now include --stop-timeout
and stop_grace_period
which are set to 60s.
Click to expand docker build instructions
There are some differences between the build steps for amd64
, arm64
, and armv7l
. These changes will happen automatically if you use the build-args INSTALL_VER
and ARCH
. For possible INSTALL_VER
values, see mbentley/docker-omada-controller-url:
No build args required; set for the default build-args
docker build \
--build-arg INSTALL_VER="5.14.26.1" \
--build-arg ARCH="amd64" \
-f Dockerfile.v5.x \
-t mbentley/omada-controller:5.14-amd64 .
Only the ARCH
build-arg is required
docker build \
--build-arg INSTALL_VER="5.14.26.1" \
--build-arg ARCH="arm64" \
-f Dockerfile.v5.x \
-t mbentley/omada-controller:5.14-arm64 .
Both the ARCH
and BASE
build-args are required
docker build \
--build-arg INSTALL_VER="5.14.26.1" \
--build-arg ARCH="armv7l" \
--build-arg BASE="ubuntu:16.04" \
-f Dockerfile.v5.x \
-t mbentley/omada-controller:5.14-armv7l .
To run this Docker image and keep persistent data in named volumes:
tl;dr: Always make sure the environment variables for the ports match any changes you have made in the web UI and you'll be fine.
If you want to change the ports of your Omada Controller to something besides the defaults, there is some unexpected behavior that the controller exhibits. There are two sets of ports: one for HTTP/HTTPS for the controller itself and another for HTTP/HTTPS for the captive portal, typically used for authentication to a guest network. The controller's set of ports, which are set by the MANAGE_*_PORT
environment variables, can only be modified using the environment variables on the first time the controller is started. If persistent data exists, changing the controller's ports via environment variables will have no effect on the controller itself and can only be modified through the web UI. On the other hand, the portal ports will always be set to whatever has been set in the environment variables, which are set by the PORTAL_*_PORT
environment variables.
Warning: If you want to change the controller ports from the default mappings, you absolutely must update the port binding inside the container via the environment variables. The ports exposed must match what is inside the container. The Omada Controller software expects that the ports are the same inside the container and outside and will load a blank page if that is not done. See #99 for details and and example of the behavior.
docker run -d \
--name omada-controller \
--stop-timeout 60 \
--restart unless-stopped \
--ulimit nofile=4096:8192 \
-p 8088:8088 \
-p 8043:8043 \
-p 8843:8843 \
-p 27001:27001/udp \
-p 29810:29810/udp \
-p 29811-29816:29811-29816 \
-e MANAGE_HTTP_PORT=8088 \
-e MANAGE_HTTPS_PORT=8043 \
-e PGID="508" \
-e PORTAL_HTTP_PORT=8088 \
-e PORTAL_HTTPS_PORT=8843 \
-e PORT_ADOPT_V1=29812 \
-e PORT_APP_DISCOVERY=27001 \
-e PORT_DISCOVERY=29810 \
-e PORT_MANAGER_V1=29811 \
-e PORT_MANAGER_V2=29814 \
-e PORT_TRANSFER_V2=29815 \
-e PORT_RTTY=29816 \
-e PORT_UPGRADE_V1=29813 \
-e PUID="508" \
-e SHOW_SERVER_LOGS=true \
-e SHOW_MONGODB_LOGS=false \
-e SSL_CERT_NAME="tls.crt" \
-e SSL_KEY_NAME="tls.key" \
-e TZ=Etc/UTC \
-v omada-data:/opt/tplink/EAPController/data \
-v omada-logs:/opt/tplink/EAPController/logs \
mbentley/omada-controller:5.14
In order to use the host's network namespace, you must first ensure that there are not any port conflicts. The docker run
command is the same except for that all of the published ports should be removed and --net host
should be added. Technically it will still work if you have the ports included, but Docker will just silently drop them. Here is a snippet of what the above should be modified to look like:
...
--restart unless-stopped \
--net host \
-e MANAGE_HTTP_PORT=8088 \
...
Variable | Default | Values | Description | Valid For |
---|---|---|---|---|
MANAGE_HTTP_PORT |
8088 |
1024 -65535 |
Management portal HTTP port; for ports < 1024, see Unprivileged Ports | >= 3.2 |
MANAGE_HTTPS_PORT |
8043 |
1024 -65535 |
Management portal HTTPS port; for ports < 1024, see Unprivileged Ports | >= 3.2 |
PGID |
508 |
any | Set the omada process group ID ` |
>= 3.2 |
PGROUP |
omada |
any | Set the group name for the process group ID to run as | >= 5.0 |
PORTAL_HTTP_PORT |
8088 |
1024 -65535 |
User portal HTTP port; for ports < 1024, see Unprivileged Ports | >= 4.1 |
PORTAL_HTTPS_PORT |
8843 |
1024 -65535 |
User portal HTTPS port; for ports < 1024, see Unprivileged Ports | >= 4.1 |
PORT_ADOPT_V1 |
29812 |
1024 -65535 |
Omada Controller and Omada Discovery Utility manage the Omada devices running firmware fully adapted to Omada Controller v4* | >= 5.x |
PORT_APP_DISCOVERY |
27001 |
1024 -65535 |
Omada Controller can be discovered by the Omada APP within the same network through this port | >= 5.x |
PORT_DISCOVERY |
29810 |
1024 -65535 |
Omada Controller and Omada Discovery Utility discover Omada devices | >= 5.x |
PORT_MANAGER_V1 |
29811 |
1024 -65535 |
Omada Controller and Omada Discovery Utility manage the Omada devices running firmware fully adapted to Omada Controller v4* | >= 5.x |
PORT_MANAGER_V2 |
29814 |
1024 -65535 |
Omada Controller and Omada Discovery Utility manage the Omada devices running firmware fully adapted to Omada Controller v5* | >= 5.x |
PORT_TRANSFER_V2 |
29815 |
1024 -65535 |
Omada Controller receives Device Info and Packet Capture files from the Omada devices | >= 5.9 |
PORT_RTTY |
29816 |
1024 -65535 |
Omada Controller establishes the remote control terminal session with the Omada devices | >= 5.9 |
PORT_UPGRADE_V1 |
29813 |
1024 -65535 |
When upgrading the firmware for the Omada devices running firmware fully adapted to Omada Controller v4*. | >= 5.x |
PUID |
508 |
any | Set the omada process user ID ` |
>= 3.2 |
PUSERNAME |
omada |
any | Set the username for the process user ID to run as | >= 5.0 |
SHOW_SERVER_LOGS |
true |
true , false |
Outputs Omada Controller logs to STDOUT at runtime | >= 4.1 |
SHOW_MONGODB_LOGS |
false |
true , false |
Outputs MongoDB logs to STDOUT at runtime | >= 4.1 |
SKIP_USERLAND_KERNEL_CHECK |
false |
true , false |
When set to true , skips the userland/kernel match check for armv7l & arm64 |
>= 3.2 |
SMALL_FILES |
false |
true , false |
See Small Files for more detail; no effect in >= 4.1.x |
3.2 only |
SSL_CERT_NAME |
tls.crt |
any | Name of the public cert chain mounted to /cert ; see Custom Certificates |
>= 3.2 |
SSL_KEY_NAME |
tls.key |
any | Name of the private cert mounted to /cert ; see Custom Certificates |
>= 3.2 |
TLS_1_11_ENABLED |
false |
true , false |
Re-enables TLS 1.0 & 1.1 if set to true |
>= 4.1 |
TZ |
Etc/UTC |
<many> | See Time Zones for more detail | >= 3.2 |
Documentation on the ports used by the controller can be found in the TP-Link FAQ.
In the examples, there are two directories where persistent data is stored: data
and logs
. The data
directory is where the persistent database data is stored where all of your settings, app configuration, etc is stored. The log
directory is where logs are written and stored. I would suggest that you use a bind mounted volume for the data
directory to ensure that your persistent data is directly under your control and of course take regular backups within the Omada Controller application itself. Previous versions of the controller (before 5.x) also used a work
persistent directory omada-work
which was mapped to /opt/tplink/EAPController/work
inside the container where the application was deployed. This work
directory is no longer needed as of 5.0.x.
By default, Omada software uses self-signed certificates. If however you want to use custom certificates you can mount them into the container as /cert/tls.key
and /cert/tls.crt
. The tls.crt
file needs to include the full chain of certificates, i.e. cert, intermediate cert(s) and CA cert. This is compatible with kubernetes TLS secrets. Entrypoint script will convert them into Java Keystore used by jetty inside the Omada SW. If you need to use different file names, you can customize them by passing values for SSL_CERT_NAME
and SSL_KEY_NAME
as seen above in the Optional Variables section.
Warning - As of the version 4.1, certificates can also be installed through the web UI. You should not attempt to mix certificate management methods as installing certificates via the UI will store the certificates in MongoDB and then the /cert
volume method will cease to function.
By default, this image uses the Etc/UTC
time zone. You may update the time zone used by passing a different value in the TZ
variable. See List of tz database time zones for a complete list of values in the TZ database name
table column.
This Docker image runs as a non-root user by default. In order to bind unprivileged ports (ports < 1024 by default), you must include --sysctl net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0
in your docker run
command to allow ports below 1024 to be bound by non-root users.
There is a Docker Compose file available for those who would like to use compose to manage the lifecycle of their container:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mbentley/docker-omada-controller/master/docker-compose.yml
<edit the compose file to match your persistent data needs>
docker compose up -d
If you are interested in using the Omada Controller APIs to retrieve data from the controller, the latest version of the API documentation that I have found is available from the community forums in this post. I'm not able to provide support for the APIs but I've found them to be helpful for my own usage and they weren't easy to find.
See the Known Issues documentation for details.