GROWI on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

GROWI on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

GROWI 7.5.6 is an open source team wiki and knowledge base for organisations that want to capture and share what they know. Pages are written in Markdown with live preview, diagrams and math, and edited collaboratively in real time so several people can work on the same page at once. Content is organised as a hierarchical page tree with links, tags, comments and a full revision history, making it easy to browse, cross reference and keep documentation current. It runs as a self contained Node.js application backed by a local MongoDB, so a single instance holds your whole knowledge base.

Single node, search optional

This image ships GROWI as a self contained single node: nginx on port 80 reverse proxies to the GROWI Node.js application, which stores every page and attachment in a local MongoDB bound to loopback. Full text search via OpenSearch or Elasticsearch is optional and is deliberately not bundled, so the appliance stays simple to run; the deployment guide shows how to attach a search cluster later when you need it.

Secure by default

Nothing here ships with a known secret. On the first boot of every VM, GROWI generates a unique administrator password, a unique MongoDB credential and a unique application secret, applies them, and writes them to a root only credentials file, so no default login is ever reachable and no two VMs share a password. Self registration is set to Closed, so the wiki is never world writable, and MongoDB is bound to the loopback interface with its own per VM credential. All wiki content and attachments live on a dedicated data disk captured into the image.

What is included

• GROWI 7.5.6 built from source, run by systemd as an unprivileged system user on Node.js 24
• nginx on port 80 reverse proxying to the GROWI application on loopback
• MongoDB 8.0 Community, bound to loopback with a per VM credential, its data on a dedicated Azure data disk
• A per VM administrator account created at first boot with a rotated password, stored in a root only file
• Closed self registration so the wiki is private by default
• An unauthenticated health endpoint for load balancers; a fully patched Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base with automatic security updates

Licensing and support

GROWI is MIT licensed and free. The cloudimg charge covers packaging, security patching, image maintenance and 24/7 expert support. Recommended VM size: Standard_B2s. Prerequisites: an Azure subscription, a VNet and an SSH key. NSG inbound: port 22 for SSH and port 80 for the wiki, with port 443 once you enable HTTPS. Deployment guide: https://www.cloudimg.co.uk/guides/growi-on-ubuntu-24-04-azure/. 24/7 support: support@cloudimg.co.uk.