Admin user fails in rocketchat - docker-compose

Question

I have been running rocketchat on a cloud instance. I have used the parameters specified on the below document in rocketchat for creating admin user through docker-compose in yaml file.
https://docs.rocket.chat/guides/administrator-guides/create-the-first-admin
I am not able to create a admin user as my variables are correctly specified.
docker-compose.yaml
version: '3.8'
services:
rocketchat:
image: rocketchat/rocket.chat:latest
container_name: $ROCKETCHAT_CONTAINER_NAME
command: >
bash -c
"for i in `seq 1 30`; do
node main.js &&
s=$$? && break || s=$$?;
echo \"Tried $$i times. Waiting 5 secs...\";
sleep 5;
done; (exit $$s)"
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- ./uploads:/app/uploads
depends_on:
- mongo
environment:
- PORT=3000
- ROOT_URL=http://xxxxxxxxx:3000
- MONGO_URL=mongodb://mongo:27017/rocketchat
- MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://mongo:27017/local
- MAIL_URL=smtp://smtp.email
- ADMIN_USERNAME=admin
- ADMIN_PASS=password
- ADMIN_EMAIL=beulah#xxxxxx.com
ports:
- 3000:$ROCKETCHAT_PORT
labels:
- "traefik.backend=rocketchat"
- "traefik.frontend.rule=Host: your.domain.tld"
networks:
- $ROCKETCHAT_NETWORK
mongo:
image: mongo:$MONGO_IMAGE_TAG
container_name: $MONGO_CONTAINER_NAME
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- ./data/db:/data/db
command: mongod --smallfiles --oplogSize 128 --replSet rs0 --storageEngine=mmapv1
env_file: .env
labels:
- "traefik.enable=false"
networks:
- $ROCKETCHAT_NETWORK
mongo-init-replica:
image: mongo:$MONGO_IMAGE_TAG
container_name: $MONGO_REPLICA_CONTAINER_NAME
command: >
bash -c
"for i in `seq 1 30`; do
mongo mongo/rocketchat --eval \"
rs.initiate({
_id: 'rs0',
members: [ { _id: 0, host: 'localhost:27017' } ]})\" &&
s=$$? && break || s=$$?;
echo \"Tried $$i times. Waiting 5 secs...\";
sleep 5;
done; (exit $$s)"
depends_on:
- mongo
env_file: .env
networks:
- $ROCKETCHAT_NETWORK
networks:
rocketchat:

Answer 1

I wasn't been able to reproduce the problem, although there is one common pitfall that you may have encountered. Tl;dr: if you run this several times on one machine in the same directory - it's most likely mongo's storage. After first setup it creates ./data directory where it keeps user accounts and everything else. If you created admin once, it won't go through this again.
Normally, if you run run rocket.chat without these variables, it allows you to create an admin account via the web interface. When you set environment variables it may get into this piece of code:
programs/server/app/app.js:
...
if (process.env.ADMIN_PASS) {
if (_.isEmpty(getUsersInRole('admin').fetch())) {
...
But as you see there is a second check for any user in 'admin' role. In other words, environment variables are only used when there is no one in the role yet.
If it does use the variables, you will see something like this in the container logs:
Inserting admin user:
Name: Administrator
Email: beulah#nonexistent.domain
Username: admin
If it does not, you'll see a line like this:
Users with admin role already exist; Ignoring environment variables ADMIN_PASS
The most obvious reason why this can happen is that you ran the compose file before with different set of credentials or registered an account via the web GUI. After that admin user was saved in the database, which (in your compose file) keeps its data outside the container, so it is persistent between restarts. If what I said about previous launch was true for you and you want to start from the beginning - remove ./data directory from where your compose file is. It is there mongo saves the data.