Appsmith CE

sudo systemctl is-active appsmith.service
sudo docker ps --filter name=appsmith --format '{{.Names}} {{.Status}}'

sudo cat /stage/scripts/appsmith-credentials.log

Note the values of APPSMITH_URL and APPSMITH_HTTPS_URL.

curl -sf http://127.0.0.1/api/v1/users/me | head -c 400

The response shows "isEmptyInstance":true until you complete the super-admin signup. After that, it becomes false.

Browse to http://<vm-ip>/. The signup form prompts for First name, Last name, Email and Password. Submit the form. The first account becomes the super-admin for this Appsmith instance.

After signup, Appsmith opens the workspaces dashboard. To create your first application, choose + New, then App from scratch. The app builder opens.

The Appsmith app builder is split into the canvas (centre), the widget panel (left) and the property pane (right). Drag a Table widget onto the canvas, bind it to a sample query, and save.

sudo docker logs --tail 50 appsmith

Use the logs to diagnose slow startup or backend errors. Appsmith uses supervisord to manage the components, so you see lines for supervisor, mongo, redis, backend and caddy.

Edit /etc/default/appsmith and restart the service:

sudo systemctl restart appsmith.service

The defaults are:

• APPSMITH_DISABLE_TELEMETRY: true
• APPSMITH_CONTAINER_MEMORY: 4g
• APPSMITH_ALLOWED_FRAME_ANCESTORS: * (lock this to your domain in production)

For larger Appsmith deployments with many concurrent users, raise APPSMITH_CONTAINER_MEMORY to 6g on a D2s_v5 or 12g on a D4s_v5.

Point your domain DNS A record at this VM's public IP, then run:

sudo docker exec -it appsmith appsmithctl install-ssl <your-domain> <your-email>

Replace <your-domain> with your domain, for example apps.example.com. Replace <your-email> with your Let's Encrypt contact email. Appsmith handles the certificate request, the Caddy reload and auto-renewal.

The complete Appsmith stack lives at /opt/appsmith/stacks. It holds the application code, MongoDB documents, Redis state and configuration. Take a consistent backup with the container running:

sudo tar czf /var/backups/appsmith-$(date +%F).tgz -C /opt appsmith

For zero-downtime backups against the live MongoDB, use appsmithctl export-db instead:

sudo docker exec appsmith appsmithctl export-db
sudo cp /opt/appsmith/stacks/data/backup/* /var/backups/

Copy /var/backups to Azure Blob Storage (az storage blob upload-batch) on a regular schedule for off-VM retention.

Stop Appsmith, replace the stacks directory, then restart the service:

sudo systemctl stop appsmith.service
sudo rm -rf /opt/appsmith/stacks
sudo tar xzf /var/backups/appsmith-<date>.tgz -C /opt
sudo systemctl start appsmith.service

sudo journalctl -u appsmith.service --no-pager -n 50
sudo docker logs --tail 80 appsmith
sudo ls /opt/appsmith/stacks/logs/

/opt/appsmith/stacks/logs/ contains backend.log, mongo.log, redis.log and caddy.log, because supervisord redirects each component there. Application logs, which hold your apps' query history, are in MongoDB.