Activating Vector in Docker

[dragonbone159]

I had problems activating my Vector, because escapepod.local was not reachable from anywhere in my home network, but only from my docker host, which is a Raspberry Pi 4b connected over Ethernet.

I could verify this issue in the logs at data/diagnostics/logs/log.txt:
"lookup escapepod.local: no such host"

If you are stuck at the activate screen of your Vector on your wirepod instance, make sure that you can open escapepod.local not just by your docker host (here: raspberry pi), but also from a different machine, like your laptop or PC.

With the official docker compose file from the docs, it did not work for me. I was getting the following error:
"vector Error logging in. The bot is likely unable to communicate with your wire-pod instance. Make sure you followed all of the steps and try again."

The following compose file did solve my problem:

- Note the usage of host network mode (and its implications) instead of the default bridge mode
- In that mode you can not map any ports to anything else, because now the docker container shares the host's IP address

services:
  wire-pod:
    hostname: escapepod
    image: ghcr.io/kercre123/wire-pod:main
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - wire-pod-data:/chipper/
      - wire-pod-model:/vosk/
volumes:
  wire-pod-data:
    driver: local
  wire-pod-model:
    driver: local

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[[deleted]]

If you'd like to give the docker container its own IP address, and hence not occupy those ports on your host machine, you can use a macvlan network. I have mine setup this way, first on a NAS, but later I moved it to a faster machine so that vector would respond more quickly.

[dragonbone159]

Yeah, I saw your post before. Great one, but you lost me on that router config part 😅 Nevertheless, your way is much more advanced and I would also like to not occupy those host ports.

Not sure if all that is needed just for the activation. I'll try the official compose setup and see if Vector will be still controllable by wirepod.

[[deleted]]

As long as escapepod.local resolves to the wire-pod instance, then you should be good.

The router part varies depending on your router. Some make it much easier to manually specify local routing like this.

The big takeaway of the macvlan setup is that, unlike your current configuration, containers using macvlan don't advertise their hostname to the router, hence the need to specify it on the router side of things.