Automate TYPO3 setup using the CLI

This section demonstrates how to fully automate a TYPO3 installation using the CLI command typo3 setup, removing the need to complete the install wizard in the browser.

This is particularly useful for repeatable local setups, CI pipelines, or scripted Docker environments.

Note

While this example uses a classic TYPO3 installation based on the martinhelmich/typo3 image, the same approach can be adapted for Composer-based projects. To do so, use a different base image (e.g. php:8.4-apache) and update the CLI path to match the Composer installation, typically vendor/bin/typo3.

Table of contents

Update the Dockerfile to install gosu and Node.js

Extend the Dockerfile to install gosu, which enables secure user switching, and include the startup.sh script to automate the setup process.

Dockerfile

FROM martinhelmich/typo3:13.4

USER root

# Install Node.js and gosu (for user switching)
RUN curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | bash - && \
    apt-get install -y nodejs gosu

# Copy the startup script into place
COPY ./startup.sh /usr/local/bin/startup.sh
RUN chmod +x /usr/local/bin/startup.sh

# Let the startup script run as entrypoint (it switches users internally)
ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/local/bin/startup.sh"]

Create a startup script that runs TYPO3 setup

The startup script checks if TYPO3 has already been installed. If not, it runs the typo3 setup CLI command in non-interactive mode using environment variables defined in Docker Compose.

startup.sh

#!/bin/bash
echo "[INFO] Running custom startup script..."

cd /var/www/html

if [ ! -f typo3conf/system/settings.php ]; then
  echo "[INFO] No settings.php found, running 'typo3 setup'..."
  gosu www-data ./typo3/sysext/core/bin/typo3 setup --no-interaction --force --server-type=apache || true
else
  echo "[INFO] settings.php found, skipping setup."
fi

exec apache2-foreground

This script:

Detects if TYPO3 has already been installed
Runs the CLI-based setup command only once
Starts Apache in the foreground as required for Docker

Note

The gosu command is used instead of su to preserve environment variables passed by Docker Compose. Without this, the typo3 setup command would not receive the necessary database and admin credentials.

Tip

If you see this message in the logs: AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name... you can safely ignore it.

Define setup parameters in docker-compose.yml

To automate setup, you must provide all required parameters via environment variables. Add these to the web service in your docker-compose.yml:

docker-compose.yml (excerpt)

version: '3.9'

services:
  db:
    image: mariadb:10.6
    container_name: compose-demo-typo3db
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root
      MYSQL_DATABASE: db
      MYSQL_USER: db
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: db
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/mysql

  web:
    build: .
    container_name: compose-demo-typo3
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    depends_on:
      - db
    volumes:
      - ./fileadmin:/var/www/html/fileadmin
      - ./typo3conf:/var/www/html/typo3conf
      - ./typo3temp:/var/www/html/typo3temp
    environment:
      TYPO3_CONTEXT: Development
      TYPO3_DB_DRIVER: mysqli
      TYPO3_DB_USERNAME: db
      TYPO3_DB_PASSWORD: db
      TYPO3_DB_PORT: 3306
      TYPO3_DB_HOST: db
      TYPO3_DB_DBNAME: db
      TYPO3_SETUP_ADMIN_EMAIL: j.doe@example.com
      TYPO3_SETUP_ADMIN_USERNAME: j.doe
      TYPO3_SETUP_ADMIN_PASSWORD: Password.1
      TYPO3_PROJECT_NAME: TYPO3-Dev

volumes:
  db_data:

Warning

If you previously ran this setup, you need to remove existing files and volumes before rebuilding to trigger setup again:

docker compose down --volumes
rm -rf typo3conf/* typo3temp/* fileadmin/*

Then rebuild and start the containers:

docker compose build --no-cache
docker compose up -d

Verify that TYPO3 setup ran successfully

Check the logs to confirm that the setup script executed on startup:

docker logs -f compose-demo-typo3

Expected output includes:

[INFO] No settings.php found, running 'typo3 setup'...
✓ Congratulations - TYPO3 Setup is done.

If the settings.php file is already present, you’ll instead see:

[INFO] settings.php found, skipping setup.

Log in to the TYPO3 backend

After the container is running and TYPO3 has been initialized, you can open the TYPO3 backend in your browser:

http://localhost:8080/typo3/

Log in using the credentials you provided in docker-compose.yml, for example:

Username: j.doe
Password: Password.1

You should now see the TYPO3 backend dashboard and can start working on your site.