10-hortusfox.md

kstack: book: Centerpoint Home Lab chapter: Documents & Organization page: HortusFox tags: [hortusfox, plants, garden, mariadb]

Overview

HortusFox is a plant care and garden management app. It tracks plants, watering schedules, fertilisation, and overdue care tasks. A separate cron container triggers scheduled task checks. Internal-only access via Step-CA TLS — no external route. The workspace is named "Jeeves Garden".

Access

Type	URL	Auth
Internal	https://hortusfox.home.local	HortusFox own auth (Step-CA TLS)

No external route — LAN access only.

Containers

Container	Image	Role
hortusfox	ghcr.io/danielbrendel/hortusfox-web:latest	Web application
hortusfox-db	mariadb:11	MariaDB database
hortusfox-cron	alpine:latest	Scheduled task runner

hortusfox (application)

Runtime: PHP 8.3 on Apache

Key environment variables:

Variable	Value / Notes
APP_WORKSPACE	Jeeves Garden
APP_TIMEZONE	America/Toronto
APP_LANG	en
APP_DEBUG	true
APP_ADMIN_EMAIL	jeeves5454@gmail.com
APP_OVERDUE_TASK_HOURS	10
APP_ENABLE_HISTORY	true
APP_HISTORY_NAME	Garden Log
APP_ENABLE_SYSTEM_MESSAGES	true
APP_ENABLE_PHOTO_SHARE	false
APP_ENABLE_CHAT	false
APP_ENABLE_SCROLLER	true
APP_CRON_PW	REDACTED
DB_HOST	hortusfox-db
DB_PORT	3306
DB_DATABASE	hortusfox
DB_USERNAME	hortusfox
DB_CHARSET	utf8mb4

Bind mounts:

Host Path	Container Path	Purpose
/home/jeeves/docker/hortusfox/images	/var/www/html/public/img	Plant images
/home/jeeves/docker/hortusfox/themes	/var/www/html/public/themes	Custom themes
/home/jeeves/docker/hortusfox/logs	/var/www/html/app/logs	App logs
/home/jeeves/docker/hortusfox/migrations	/var/www/html/app/migrations	DB migration files
/home/jeeves/docker/hortusfox/backup	/var/www/html/public/backup	Export/backup files

hortusfox-db (MariaDB 11)

Image: mariadb:11 (MariaDB 11.8.6)

Variable	Value
MYSQL_DATABASE	hortusfox
MYSQL_USER	hortusfox
MYSQL_PASSWORD	REDACTED
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD	REDACTED

Bind mounts:

Host Path	Container Path
/home/jeeves/docker/hortusfox/db	/var/lib/mysql

hortusfox-cron (Alpine)

Image: alpine:latest

A lightweight Alpine container that runs periodic cron jobs to trigger HortusFox's scheduled task processing (e.g., overdue task notifications). It communicates with the main hortusfox container using the APP_CRON_PW credential. No persistent volumes.

Traefik Labels

traefik.http.routers.hortusfox.rule: Host(`hortusfox.home.local`)
traefik.http.routers.hortusfox.entrypoints: websecure
traefik.http.routers.hortusfox.tls.certresolver: step-ca
traefik.http.services.hortusfox.loadbalancer.server.port: 80

Notes / Gotchas

• APP_CRON_PW authenticates the cron container's requests to the HortusFox web app. This is set as a plaintext environment variable — treat it as a secret. It is REDACTED in documentation.
• APP_DEBUG: true means verbose PHP error output is enabled. Disable this if HortusFox ever becomes accessible externally.
• Plant images are stored in the images bind mount. This directory should be included in backups to preserve photo history.

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Last Updated: 2026-06-17