---
title: "Goodbye Todoist, Hello Vikunja"
categories:
  - homelab
tags:
  - todo
  - vikunja
---

## What is Vikunja?

As a longtime user of [Todoist](https://todoist.com/), I have been eagerly awaiting an open-source and self-hosted alternative with all the features that I like. So far, it looks like [Vikunja](https://vikunja.io/) will be that replacement!

Vikunja allows me to track tasks on my dashboard and create projects that team members can access, all accessible through an easy dashboard. I use a [PWA](https://web.dev/articles/what-are-pwas) and [CalDAV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalDAV) to access my tasks on mobile. I'd prefer a native app, but this works for now.

![A screenshot of the dark theme Vikunja dashboard with some tasks and projects.](/assets/posts/2024-01-13-vikunja/vikunja-dashboard-min.png)

## Deploying Vikunja

My Vikunja deployment depends on two servers in my homelab rack. Lavender is an Ubuntu server that handles incoming connections as an Nginx reverse proxy and Mint is a Rocky server that hosts several services including Vikunja.

### Mint Configuration

Thanks to Vikunja's fairly thorough [Docker installation guide](https://vikunja.io/docs/docker-walkthrough/) it was easy to deploy using the `compose.yml` I've included below. The configuration I settled on allows users to perform password resets and configure email reminders for tasks.

```yaml
version: "3"

services:
  db:
    image: postgres:13
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: <secret>
      POSTGRES_USER: <secret>
    volumes:
      - ./db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    restart: unless-stopped
  api:
    image: vikunja/api
    environment:
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_HOST: db
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_PASSWORD: <secret>
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_TYPE: postgres
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_USER: <secret>
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_DATABASE: vikunja
      VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET: <secret>
      VIKUNJA_SERVICE_FRONTENDURL: https://todo.beans.team/
      VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLETASKATTACHMENTS: 1
      VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLEREGISTRATION: 0
      VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLEEMAILREMINDERS: 1
      VIKUNJA_MAILER_ENABLED: 1
      VIKUNJA_MAILER_FORCESSL: 1
      VIKUNJA_MAILER_HOST: <secret>
      VIKUNJA_MAILER_PORT: <secret>
      VIKUNJA_MAILER_USERNAME: <secret>
      VIKUNJA_MAILER_PASSWORD: <secret>
      VIKUNJA_MAILER_FROMEMAIL: <secret>
    ports:
      - 3456:3456
    volumes:
      - ./files:/app/vikunja/files
    depends_on:
      - db
    restart: unless-stopped
  frontend:
    image: vikunja/frontend
    restart: unless-stopped
  proxy:
    image: nginx
    ports:
      - 4321:80
    volumes:
      - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf:ro
    depends_on:
      - api
      - frontend
    restart: unless-stopped
```

The only snag I hit on the way was attempting to handle the Nginx configuration on Lavender which caused issues with my firewall configuration. I settled on using Vikunja's `nginx.conf` within the compose script to handle connections in the way that the application was expecting.

```nginx
server {
    listen 80;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://frontend:80;
    }

    location ~* ^/(api|dav|\.well-known)/ {
        proxy_pass http://api:3456;
        client_max_body_size 20M;
    }
}
```

### Lavender Configuration

After configuring my DNS settings with my domain provider I deployed a new site configuration in Nginx to direct incoming traffic from my `todo.` subdomain to the correct port on Mint. Once I was able to validate the new configuration I used Certbot to issue a new certificate for the subdomain to enable HTTPS.

```nginx
server {
    server_name todo.beans.team;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://mint:4321;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }

    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/todo.beans.team/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/todo.beans.team/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

}
```

### Vikunja CLI

Since I disabled self registration adding new users requires that I use the [Vikunja CLI](https://vikunja.io/docs/cli/), so here are some commands that I found useful. When using docker these have to be executed from the API container.

```bash
docker exec vikunja-api-1 ./vikunja subcommand
```

#### User List

Outputs a table of all registered users.

```bash
vikunja user list
```

#### User Create

Registers a new user.

```bash
vikunja user create -e user@email.com -u username
```

After running this command you will be prompted to enter a password.

### Dump

Creates a zip file of all Vikunja data including the full database.

```bash
vikunja dump
```

There are many more, but you can find them in the official documentation.
