running Moodle using docker

Posted under » PHP » System Admin on 16 Apr 2025

Moodle™ LMS is an open source online Learning Management System widely used at universities, schools, and corporations. It is modular and highly adaptable to any type of online learning.

I can't install the latest Moodle directly because my Ubuntu uses an older version of PHP. I did consider upgrading the PHP but I want to try using Docker instead.

So I look for moodle in docker hub and this seems to be the most reliable (released on a regular basis with the latest distribution packages available). First thing I see is a Warning: This quick setup is only intended for development environments.

As usual, it is recommended that you pull the image from the hub

$ docker pull bitnami/moodle:latest

This step is unecessary because you will create a volume for Moodle™ persistence later (below)

Bitnami Moodle uses the Docker Image for MariaDB⁠ for the database requirements.It is running on the internal Docker network. Create one if it has not been created.

$ docker network create moodle-network

Create a volume for MariaDB persistence and create a MariaDB container

$ docker volume create --name mariadb_data
docker run -d --name mariadb \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env MARIADB_USER=bn_moodle \
  --env MARIADB_PASSWORD=bitnami \
  --env MARIADB_DATABASE=bitnami_moodle \
  --network moodle-network \
  --volume mariadb_data:/bitnami/mariadb \
  bitnami/mariadb:latest

Create volumes for Moodle™ persistence and launch the container

$ docker volume create --name moodle_data
docker run -d --name moodle \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 8443:8443 \
  --env ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes \
  --env MOODLE_DATABASE_USER=bn_moodle \
  --env MOODLE_DATABASE_PASSWORD=bitnami \
  --env MOODLE_DATABASE_NAME=bitnami_moodle \
  --network moodle-network \
  --volume moodle_data:/bitnami/moodle \
  --volume moodledata_data:/bitnami/moodledata \
  bitnami/moodle:latest

You can then run moodle already at port 8080. You will also see that

[::]:8080->8080/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8443->8443/tcp

I really don't care much about 8443 because I don't need it for SSL. With port 8080 I can convert it to 80 by reverse proxy. Notice that both moodle and mariadb is using the 'moodle-network'. However, mariadb port 3306 is not exposed and is used internally by 'moodle-network'.

Volumes are created at /var/lib/docker/volumes but you can't edit it or read only or stateless.

You may prefer installing Moodle the regular way »