Installation¶

Install¶

Updates2MQTT prefers to be run inside a Docker container, though can run standalone, for example scripted via cron or systemd.

The only mandatory configuration is the MQTT broker host, user name and password, which can be set by environment variables, or the config file. The node name will be taken from the operating system if there’s no config file. See Configuration for details.

To check that it’s working, have a look at Verifying it Works on Home Assistant.

Docker¶

See examples directory for a working docker-compose.yaml.

If you want to update and restart containers, then the file system paths to the location of the directory where the docker compose file lives must be available in the Updates2MQTT container.

docker compose snippet

volumes:
      # Must have config directory mapped
      - ./conf:/app/conf
      # Must have the Docker daemon socket mapped
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      # This list of paths is only needed when containers are to be updated
      # The paths here are completely dependent on where your docker-compose files live
      # and the internal/external paths must be exactly the same
      - /my/container/home:/my/container/home
      - /more/containers:/more/containers

The example docker-compose.yaml mounts /my/container/home for this purpose, so if your containers are in /my/container/home/app1, /my/container/home/app2 etc, then Updates2MQTT will be able to find them in order to restart them. Map as many root paths as needed.

Ensuring Always Running¶

Use cron to make sure the container is always up, this example will run once an hour, adapt the schedule and the location of docker-compose.yaml for your needs.

sudo crontab -e

0 * * * * /usr/bin/docker compose -f /containers/updates2mqtt/docker-compose.yaml up -d --no-recreate

Without Docker¶

Updates2MQTT is published as a PyPI package on every release, so it can be used in any way you like - cron, systemd, your own Dockerfile, or whatever.

Run without installing using uv¶

uv run --with updates2mqtt updates2mqtt

Install and run with pip¶

pip install updates2mqtt
python3 -m updates2mqtt

On Portainer¶

Install an Updates2MQTT container on each Portainer host, this can be using a docker-compose.yaml file, or using the Portainer UI to define the image name and env vars ( no config file required ). Each of the containers will show up as a Docker Compose service as if Portainer even if it has been fully managed by Portainer without a manual docker-compose.yaml file.