If you’re deploying Tracecat into an external instance (e.g. AWS EC2, GCP Compute Engine, Azure VM), please note that you’ll have to set PUBLIC_APP_URL and PUBLIC_API_URL in the .env file to the IP address or host you are accessing Tracecat from.

For example, if you are port forwarding Tracecat from http://localhost (port 80) inside AWS EC2 to http://localhost:8080 on your local machine, you must set PUBLIC_APP_URL to http://localhost:8080 and PUBLIC_API_URL to http://localhost:8080/api/.

You can set these options when running the env.sh configuration script.

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Prerequisites

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Verify Prerequisites

To verify that Docker Compose and Docker are installed on the machine where you plan to install Tracecat, run the following commands.

# Check Docker installation
docker

# Check Docker Compose installation
docker compose

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Download Configuration Files

Tracecat requires a set of environment variables and credentials stored in .env file to run. We created a helpful shell script to generate the .env file. Use the commands listed below to download the required configuration files (env.sh, .env.example) and generate your own .env file.

curl -o env.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TracecatHQ/tracecat/0.11.0/env.sh
curl -o .env.example https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TracecatHQ/tracecat/0.11.0/.env.example
chmod +x env.sh && ./env.sh

You should see the following instructions after executing env.sh.

If you’re deploying Tracecat into local docker compose, input:

  • y (yes to production mode)
  • localhost (default host)
  • n (no to postgres SSL mode).

If you’re deploying Tracecat into an external / Cloud VM, input:

  • y (yes to production mode)
  • <host-where-tracecat-is-exposed> (e.g. localhost:8080)
  • n (no to postgres SSL mode).

env.sh

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Download Caddyfile

Tracecat uses Caddy as a reverse proxy. You’ll need to download the following Caddyfile to configure this service.

curl -o Caddyfile https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TracecatHQ/tracecat/0.11.0/Caddyfile

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Download Docker Compose File

curl -o docker-compose.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TracecatHQ/tracecat/0.11.0/docker-compose.yml

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Start Tracecat

Run the command below to start Tracecat and all related services. Make sure your docker-compose.yml and generated .env files are in the same directory.

docker compose up

Your Tracecat instance should now be running on http://localhost. To access the Tracecat GUI, visit http://localhost.

welcome-page

Tracecat comes with a REST API, you can visit the live API docs at http://localhost/api/docs.

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Next Steps

  • Log into Tracecat and build your first playbook. View quickstart.
  • Tracecat comes with basic (email + password) authentication. Find out how to configure other authentication methods. View docs.
  • Read inline comments in the generated .env file to better understand Tracecat’s configurations. View .env.example file
  • (Optional) Configure external-facing webhooks. View docs.
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