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🛡️ Admin Manual

This manual is for the people who install and run LibreFolio. Most administration happens from the command line, through environment variables, or in the app's Admin settings tab.

📚 Guides

🐳 Deployment & Exposure

  • 📦 Host Installation: Manual setup using Python, Node.js, and Pipenv directly on the host machine.
  • 🐳 Advanced Docker: Containerized deployment using Docker Compose, volume bindings, and user GID/UID ownership configuration.
  • 🌐 Expose Securely: Securely expose your private LibreFolio instance over the internet.
  • 🔍 Check Connection Security: Verify that your users connect securely, and fix the session cookie or the reverse proxy when they do not.

⚙️ System Configuration

  • 📝 Environment Variables: Full list of supported .env variables (PORT, JWT_SECRET, LIBREFOLIO_DATA_DIR, etc.) and variable resolution precedence.
  • ⚙️ Global Settings: Configure system-wide runtime settings (session TTL, upload limits, market data sync intervals).

🧹 Maintenance & Operations

  • 🛠️ CLI Admin Tools: How to use the dev.py script for administrative tasks (user management, database upgrades).
  • 📂 Filesystem Structure: Details on where databases, logs, uploads, and temporary folders are stored, and how to perform backups.

🔔 Update Notifications

When an administrator signs in, LibreFolio checks GitHub for a newer stable release. If there is one, the New version available window shows your version and the latest side by side, with a How to update link to the updating guide and a Release notes on GitHub link.

Update available modal with current and latest version
  • Remind me later closes the window until a later sign-in.
  • Skip this version stops the automatic prompt for that version; a newer one is announced again.
  • A release is announced only once its Docker image can be downloaded, and the window waits until no other window or guide is open.
  • Without internet access, the automatic check fails silently: no error, no banner.
  • To check right away, use Check for updates in the changelog: it reports errors, and versions you skipped too.
👥 Other users — when someone who is not an administrator checks

For users who are not administrators, no check runs at sign-in. If one of them runs Check for updates and a newer release exists, the Update available — contact an administrator dialog lists the administrators, with their e-mail addresses when available, so they know whom to ask.

🔐 Keep Users Signed In After a Restart

LibreFolio signs every login session with a secret key, JWT_SECRET.

  • Not set (the default): a new random key is made at every start, so everyone must log in again after a restart or an update.
  • Set: sessions survive restarts. Set it also if several separate LibreFolio servers share the same users behind a load balancer.

🔑 1. Generate a key

python3 -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(64))"

No Python on the host? Run it inside the container instead:

docker exec librefolio python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(64))"

📝 2. Add it to .env and restart

JWT_SECRET=paste-the-generated-value-here

Restart LibreFolio (with Docker Compose: docker compose up -d). Keep the key private: whoever knows it can forge a session.

The workers of a single ./dev.py server --workers … share one key on their own. How long a session lasts is the Session Duration in Global Settings. For the details, see the developer page Security Architecture.