Deployment

This guide walks you through deploying Colander on a dedicated server.

Colander’s official Docker image is available on GitHub. The stack we provide includes the Watchtower service, which automatically updates the deployed version of Colander.

Requirements#

We recommend using a dedicated server with at least:

• 4 cores
• 4GB of RAM
• 500GB of storage space

We recommend installing Debian, as it’s the operating system we’re most familiar with. We can guide you through the entire process, from installation to maintenance and debugging.

Your server must have a public IP address as well as a domain name.

Download Colander package#

First, dowload the latest Colander deployment package from Github.

Decompress the package on your server.

Configure the server#

Next, configure the deployment by editing the file .envs/.tpl/.base. Set the following variables according to your production environment:

• ACME_EMAIL: Email address for to the TLS certificate
• ADMIN_NAME: Administrator’s full name
• ADMIN_EMAIL: Email address for crash and error notifications
• ROOT_DOMAIN: Domain name pointing to your server
• DJANGO_DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL: Email address used for sending emails
• EMAIL_HOST: Host for sending email (can be the SMTP server of your email provider)
• EMAIL_HOST_USER: Username for the SMTP server
• EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD: Password for the SMTP server
• EMAIL_PORT: Port for the SMTP server
• EMAIL_USE_TLS: True if the SMTP server uses TLS, False otherwise
• EMAIL_USE_SSL: True if the SMTP server uses SSL, False otherwise

For detailed email configuration, refer to the Django documentation.

Generete configuration#

Once configured, generate the entire stack configuration by running:

bash gen.sh

This script creates multiple files containing environment variables for different services.

Start the stack#

Now, use docker compose to start the Colander stack:

docker compose -f no-sso.yml build
docker compose -f no-sso.yml up -d 

This starts the Colander services. You can view the logs with:

docker compose -f no-sso.yml logs

Access Colander#

Use your web browser to access Colander at the configured domain name.

Admin user#

Create admin users for both Colander and Threatr by using the following commands:

docker compose -f no-sso.yml run --rm colander-front python manage.py createsuperuser
docker compose -f no-sso.yml run --rm threatr-front python manage.py createsuperuser

Follow the instructions to create the accounts.

Load Threatr data#

Threatr includes predefined entity types. To load them, run:

docker compose -f no-sso.yml run --rm threatr-front python manage.py insert_default_data

Connect Colander to Threatr#

To connect Colander to Threatr, follow these steps:

• In the Threatr administration panel, create a regular user in the menu Users menu and an API key for this user in the menu Tokens.

• In the administration panel of Colander, via the menu Backend credentials, create a new entry with threatr as backend identifier and for the credentials field, set

    {"api_key": "your Threatr API key"}

Connect Threatr to 3rd-party vendors#

In the Threatr administration panel, create new entries for the 3rd-party vendors in the Vendor Credentials menu.

{"api_key": "your API key"}

{"api_key": "your API key"}

{"api_key": "your API key"}

{"api_key": "your API key"}

Development environment setup#

Here’s how to set up Colander for development:

Clone the Colander repository. Build and start the Colander stack using Docker Compose (or Podman). The local.yml provides the entire stack you need.

git clone https://github.com/PiRogueToolSuite/colander.git
cd colander
docker compose -f local.yml build 
docker compose -f local.yml up -d
docker compose -f local.yml run --rm django python manage.py createsuperuser 
docker compose -f local.yml logs -f -n 44 django  # to check the logs

Then, you should be able to access Colander at http://localhost:8000.

To stop the development envirnoment, use:

docker compose -f local.yml stop