Deploying Paperless-ngx Open-Source Document Management System on Ubuntu 24.04

Paperless-ngx is an open-source document management system that converts scans and PDFs into a fully searchable archive using Tesseract OCR, with tags, custom fields, and automated processing rules. This guide deploys Paperless-ngx using Docker Compose with PostgreSQL, Redis, and Traefik handling automatic HTTPS, then uploads a document and verifies OCR extraction. By the end, you'll have Paperless-ngx serving an OCR-indexed document archive securely at your domain. Set Up the Directory Structure 1. Create the project directories: $ mkdir -p ~/paperless-ngx/ { data,media,export,consume,pgdata } $ cd ~/paperless-ngx 2. Create the environment file: $ nano .env DOMAIN = paperless.example.com LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL = admin@example.com PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY = CHANGE_TO_RANDOM_STRING PAPERLESS_URL = https://paperless.example.com PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE = UTC PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE = eng PAPERLESS_DBPASS = STRONG_PASSWORD_HERE POSTGRES_DB = paperless POSTGRES_USER = paperless POSTGRES_PASSWORD = STRONG_PASSWORD_HERE Use the same value for PAPERLESS_DBPASS and POSTGRES_PASSWORD . PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY should be a 32+ character random string. Deploy with Docker Compose 1. Create the Compose manifest: $ nano docker-compose.yaml services : traefik : image : traefik:v3.6 container_name : traefik command : - " --providers.docker=true" - " --providers.docker.exposedbydefault=false" - " --entrypoints.web.address=:80" - " --entrypoints.websecure.address=:443" - " --entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.to=websecure" - " --entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.scheme=https" - " --certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.httpchallenge=true" - " --certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.httpchallenge.entrypoint=web" - " --certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.email=${LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL}" - " --certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.storage=/letsencrypt/acme.json" ports : - " 80:80" - " 443:443" volumes : - " ./letsencrypt:/letsencrypt" - " /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro"