Zensical

Zensical is a modern static site generator designed to simplify building and maintaining project documentation. It's built by the creators of Material for MkDocs and shares the same core design principles and philosophy - batteries included, easy to use, with powerful customization options.

Port	8000
Registry	ghcr.io/daemonless/zensical
Source	https://zensical.org
Website	https://zensical.org

Version Tags

Tag	Description	Best For
latest	Upstream Binary. Built from official release.	Most users — recommended.
pkg	FreeBSD Quarterly. Uses stable, tested packages.	Production stability.
pkg-latest	FreeBSD Latest. Rolling package updates.	Staying current.

Prerequisites

Before deploying, ensure your host environment is ready. See the Quick Start Guide for host setup instructions.

Deployment

Podman Compose

services:
  zensical:
    image: "ghcr.io/daemonless/zensical:latest"
    container_name: zensical
    environment:
      - PUID=1000  # User ID for the application process
      - PGID=1000  # Group ID for the application process
      - TZ=UTC  # Timezone for the container
    volumes:
      - "/path/to/containers/zensical:/config"
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    # always (not unless-stopped) so FreeBSD's podman rc.d auto-starts it at boot
    restart: always

Save as compose.yaml, then run podman-compose up -d.

AppJail Director

.env:

# .env

DIRECTOR_PROJECT=zensical
PUID=1000
PGID=1000
TZ=UTC

appjail-director.yml:

# appjail-director.yml

options:
  - virtualnet: ':<random> default'
  - nat:
services:
  zensical:
    name: zensical
    options:
      - container: 'boot args:--pull'
      - expose: '8000:8000 proto:tcp'
    oci:
      user: root
      environment:
        - PUID: !ENV '${PUID}'
        - PGID: !ENV '${PGID}'
        - TZ: !ENV '${TZ}'
    volumes:
      - zensical: /config
volumes:
  zensical:
    device: '/path/to/containers/zensical'

Makejail:

# Makejail

ARG tag=latest

OPTION overwrite=force
OPTION from=ghcr.io/daemonless/zensical:${tag}

Save the files above, then run appjail-director up.

Note: Exposing ports in AppJail means that your service can be reached from remote hosts. If that is not your intention, do not expose the ports and communicate with the service using the IPv4 address assigned by the virtual network.

Podman CLI

podman run -d --name zensical \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=UTC \
  -v /path/to/containers/zensical:/config \
  ghcr.io/daemonless/zensical:latest

Save as run.sh, then run sh run.sh.

AppJail

appjail oci run -Pd \
  -o overwrite=force \
  -o container="args:--pull" \
  -o virtualnet=":<random> default" \
  -o nat \
  -o expose="8000:8000 proto:tcp" \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=UTC \
  -o fstab="/path/to/containers/zensical /config <pseudofs>" \
  ghcr.io/daemonless/zensical:latest zensical

Save as run.sh, then run sh run.sh.

Note: Exposing ports in AppJail means that your service can be reached from remote hosts. If that is not your intention, do not expose the ports and communicate with the service using the IPv4 address assigned by the virtual network.

Bastille

Warning

Bastille's OCI support is experimental. It requires buildah, shares the host network stack (inherit), and persists image-declared volumes under --data-path.

services:
  zensical:
    image: "ghcr.io/daemonless/zensical:latest"
    container_name: zensical
    network_mode: host  # jail shares host networking
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=UTC

Save as podman-compose.yml, then run bastille up. Or via CLI:

bastille create -O \
  --env PUID=1000 \
  --env PGID=1000 \
  --env TZ=UTC \
  --data-path /path/to/containers/zensical \
  zensical ghcr.io/daemonless/zensical:latest inherit

Ansible

- name: Deploy zensical
  containers.podman.podman_container:
    name: zensical
    image: "ghcr.io/daemonless/zensical:latest"
    state: started
    restart_policy: always
    env:
      PUID: "1000"
      PGID: "1000"
      TZ: "UTC"
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - "/path/to/containers/zensical:/config"

Save as zensical-deploy.yaml, then run ansible-playbook zensical-deploy.yaml.

Access at: http://localhost:8000

Parameters

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
PUID	1000	User ID for the application process
PGID	1000	Group ID for the application process
TZ	UTC	Timezone for the container

Volumes

Path	Description
/config	Configuration directory

Ports

Port	Protocol	Description
8000	TCP	Web UI

Architectures: amd64 User: bsd (UID/GID via PUID/PGID, defaults to 1000:1000) Base: FreeBSD 15.1

---

Need help? Join our Discord community.