Containerized Factorio Headless Server

Docker Tag	Factorio Version	Description	Release Date
latest, stable	2.0.28	Factorio headless server stable release	2024-12-21
experimental	2.0.23	Factorio headless server experimental release	2024-12-21
2.0.28	2.0.28	Factorio headless server stable static release	2024-12-21

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• Recent changes, see: GitHub CHANGELOG.md
• Report any bugs, issues or feature requests on GitHub

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For security/attack surface reduction the container is configured to run the Factorio headless server with an internal user & group factorio having a pre-set UID & GID of 999. The container will attempt to adjust permissions on mapped volumes and data to match before dropping privileges to start the Factorio server processes. If the container is being run with a different Docker --user setting permissions may need to be fixed manually.

IE: chown -R 999:999 factorio

A custom UID and GID can be configured for the container internal factorio user and group. For more information see the "Environment variables" section in this document.

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Always stop the existing container and make a VERIFIED backup copy of your Factorio save data before installing newer images.

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Usage

The container has a single volume /factorio with the following structure:

factorio
|-- config
|   |-- map-gen-settings.json
|   |-- map-gen-settings.example.json
|   |-- map-settings.json
|   |-- map-settings.example.json
|   |-- RCON.pw
|   |-- server-adminlist.json
|   |-- server-banlist.json
|   |-- server-settings.json
|   `-- server-whitelist.json
|-- mods
|   `-- mod.zip
|-- saves
|   `-- save.zip
`-- scenarios
    `-- scenario.zip

The container exposes two ports:

• 27015/tcp: Factorio RCON port
• 34197/udp: Factorio default server port

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The most basic way to run this container:

$ docker run --name factorio -d \
    -p 34197:34197/udp \
    goofball222/factorio

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Recommended: run via Docker Compose:

Have the container store the config, mods, saves, and scenarios on a local file-system or in a specific, known data volume (recommended for persistence and troubleshooting) and expose the RCON port for admin:

version: '3'

services:
  factorio:
    image: goofball222/factorio
    container_name: factorio
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "27015:27015"
      - "34197:34197/udp"
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - .:/factorio
    environment:
      - TZ=UTC

Example basic docker-compose.yml file

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Logs are available directly from the running container, IE: "docker logs factorio"

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Environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
DEBUG	false	Set to true for extra container verbosity for debugging
FACTORIO_OPTS	unset	Add custom command line options to factorio server executable at runtime
FACTORIO_PORT	unset	Override server default port for game client connections
FACTORIO_RCON_PASSWORD	unset	Specify the server RCON password
FACTORIO_RCON_PORT	27015	Specifies the server RCON admin port
FACTORIO_SCENARIO	unset	Specifies a scenario name for the server to run
PGID	999	Specifies the GID for the container internal factorio group (used for file ownership)
PUID	999	Specifies the UID for the container internal factorio user (used for process and file ownership)
RUN_CHOWN	true	Set to false to disable the container automatic chown at startup. Speeds up startup process on overlay2 Docker hosts. NB/IMPORTANT: It's critical that you insure directory/data permissions on all mapped volumes are correct before disabling this or Factorio will not start.
RUNAS_UID0	false	Set to true to force the container to run the Factorio server process as UID=0 (root) - NB/IMPORTANT: running with this set to "true" is insecure

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During the first launch of the container the server-settings.json and map-gen-settings.json config files will be populated with the Factorio sample/defaults if they don't already exist. It is highly recommended to edit these files and relaunch the container afterwards or provide pre-setup copies in the config directory prior to first launch. The config sample files are available in the headless server tar.gz file in the "data" folder. The container will also generate a default map / save.zip in the saves folder if one is not found on launch.

The RCON password can be set via the FACTORIO_RCON_PASSWORD ENV flag or loaded from /factorio/config/RCON.pwd each time the container is started. If the FACTORIO_RCON_PASSWORD ENV var is not set or the RCON.pwd file is not present a random RCON password will be generated and saved in /factorio/config/RCON.pwd. The active RCON password can also be found at the start of the container log file at each launch.

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Optional config examples

config/server-whitelist.json - if present only the configured Factorio users will be allowed access

[
    "user1",
    "user2",
    "user3"
]

config/server-banlist.json - if present the configured Factorio user IDs will be denied access

[
    "banneduser1",
    "banneduser2",
    "banneduser3",
    "banneduser4"
]

config/server-adminlist.json - if present the configured Factorio user IDs will have admin access

[
    "adminuser1",
    "adminuser2"
]