Running docker container with non root user

By default vaultwarden/server is using root user to run service inside the container. There are few things you need to set to run the container as non-root user if you wish to do so:

1. Make sure that the directory, you're mounting inside the container will be writable by the user. For example if you decide to run as nobody, the directory needs to be writable by user with id 65534. For other ways to specify user inside the container, see the docker documentation, in our examples here we will use nobody.

# Make the directory on the host, change this to you preferred path
sudo mkdir /vw-data

# Set the owner using user id. 
# Note that the ownership must match user in /etc/passwd *inside* the container, not on your host
sudo chown 65534 /vw-data

# Give the owner full rights to the folder
sudo chmod u+rwx /vw-data

2. Start the container with proper parameters. Define the user and make sure to start with port set to 1024 or higher.

docker run -d \
  --name vaultwarden \
  --user nobody \
  -e ROCKET_PORT=1024 \
  -v /vw-data/:/data/ \
  -p 80:1024 \
  vaultwarden/server:latest

Notice that the port mapping (-p 80:1024) reflects the ROCKET_PORT setting.

Another way may be CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE, which allows to bind to ports below 1024 as non-root user.

cap_add:
  - CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE
user: nobody