[Solution?] how to remote update the hawser agent? i do it like this

[zandadoum]

Hello,

I use dockhand on my main host and the hawser agent on 10+ VMs each with their own docker (homelab, each project gets it's own VM)

The recurring problem I found, is that I had to manually SSH into each VM to update the hawser agent, as I didn't find a way to do it through the GUI easily.

If there is such solution in place, please tell me how to do it properly, as I didn't find such information

If there is no such solution in place, I'd like to share how I am doing it right now.

in first place, I installed the hawser agent in docker compose on each VM as I like compose:

services:
  hawser:
    container_name: hawser
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    ports:
      - 2376:2376
    environment:
      - TOKEN=*mysecret*
    image: ghcr.io/finsys/hawser:latest
networks: {}

after a few days I realised that I would have to SSH into each VM to update this, because when I try to do it within the dockhand GUI, it would hang and not update at all, as it requires the agent to connect

as dockhand has a self update feature that basically runs a second compose temporarily to update itself, I thought I could to the same for hawser.
because I am not a coder myself, I asked chatgpt for a couple of commands and in the end this is what I came up with:

services:
  hawser-updater:
    image: docker:24-cli
    container_name: hawser-updater
    restart: "no"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - /*your path to the compose*/hawser:/host/hawser:ro
    working_dir: /host/hawser
    entrypoint: >
      sh -c "
        echo 'Pulling Hawser image...';
        docker compose pull hawser;
        echo 'Restarting Hawser container...';
        docker compose up -d hawser;
        echo 'Updater done, exiting...';
      "

so what this compose does is simply run once, docker pull and restart hawser and then exit. all you have to do in dockhand is click the start button and wait a few seconds. possibly also refresh the screen with F5

anyways, this works for me, so I wanted to share it both here and on the hawser git. if there's a proper/better way please let me know and I'll delete this.

thx.

[advisorgee]

Thanks for this; it works wonderfully.

[nmincone]

Perfect! I'll try this later. Thank you.

[jotka]

thanks @zandadoum (https://dockhand.pro/manual/#tips-hawser-update)

[bullgator2k]

Although this is item is closed, I thought it might be worth expanding on this topic since afaik dockhand is also not self updateable.
I adapted this same method to be used to update dockhand (as long as it is deployed via docker compose of course).
Here is a sample file for the updater that I have used and tested successfully (albeit, only once so far):

services:
dockhand-updater:
image: docker:24-cli
container_name: dockhand-updater
restart: "no"
volumes:
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
- <dockhand_compose_path>:/host/dockhand:ro
working_dir: /host/dockhand
entrypoint: >
sh -c "
echo 'Pulling Dockhand image...';
docker compose pull dockhand;
echo 'Restarting Dockhand container...';
docker compose up -d dockhand;
echo 'Updater done, exiting...';
"
Just remember... your mileage may vary.