How to update containers using Portainer

If you want to automatically update your containers at specific interval, you can use this guide to install Watchtower, an app that will monitor your containers on specific interval and if there is any update available, will perform the update and restart your container.

But you can also have some important containers and you want to perform the update manually, to make sure is up and running after update.

In this guide i will show you how to manually update your containers using Portainer.

We are choosing to update our Plex container to latest version, if we check in the Plex interface we see there is an update available

To perform the update, open Portainer by typing in your web browser http://yournasip:19000
After you login on Portainer, go to Home, then click on your Local Environment

On the left menu go to Containers and then click on Plex container

From the Actions menu, click on Recreate

On the next window, togle the button Re-pull image and press on Recreate

If everything goes well, the container is sucessfuly re-created using the latest image and restarted

Once is started, we go to Plex interface and we see it was updated to the latest version

How to route public internet traffic via Tailscale running on UGREEN NAS

There might be times when you want Tailscale to route your public internet traffic. For example, you might want to route all your public internet traffic if:

  • You’re in a coffee shop with untrusted Wi-Fi.
  • You’re traveling overseas and need access to an online service (such as banking) only available in your home country.

In this guide, i will show how to route your internet traffic from an android device as example via your tailscale node installed on your UGREEN NAS.

We assume you have followed this guide and you have Tailscale installed on your UGREEN NAS using Portainer stack.
We need to adapt our stack to enable the exit node option on our node. If you don’t know how to adapt already created stacks in Portainer, follow this guide
In tailscale stack editor, add the line below under the environment: section

TS_EXTRA_ARGS=--advertise-exit-node

Scroll down and click on Update stack

Once the container is running again, go to your tailscale admin console
You nottice a small tag under your NAS machine with an exclamation sign. Now this machine must be authorized to be used as exit node.
Click on the 3 dots and thne Edit route settings. (You will maybe like also to Disable key expiry)

Ccheck the box Use as exit node and click on Save.

Node has been authorized to be used as Exit Node

Now, on your phone open tailscale and connect to your network.
Click on EXIT NODE

Your NAS machine should be visible in the list. Click on it to used it as exit node.

And done, your mobile internet traffic is routed now via your NAS internet connection.

How to edit stacks in Portainer

In this guide, i will explain how to edit the already created stacks in Portainer, in order to add additional options for our available docker containers.

In order to be sure that Portainer is running, open UGOS, go to Docker app > Container and check the status of portainer. If is not running, toggle the button on the right.

Open Portainer by typing in your web browser http://yournasip:19000 and login with your user and password created during Portainer installation.
After you login on Portainer, go to Home, then click on your Local Environment

On the left menu click on Stacks and it will open the list with the already created stacks.
Click on the one you want to edit, as example tailscale

Press on the Editor button

Modify the line you want or add an extra variable on the stack

Scroll down on the page and click on Update the stack

On the next window, you can also select the option to Re-pull image and redeploy. This will also update your image to the last available version.
Click on Update

If the updated stack is valid (no wrong value added), you will see a message that the deployment was successfully and the container will show as running.

How to connect to NAS via terminal using putty

This guide will explain how to connect to your NAS via a terminal client (putty in this guide).

Download the putty client from https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html and install it

On UGOS, open Control Panel and go to Terminal Device

Make sure the SSH checkbox is ticked, and is recomendded to change the default port 22 to something else.

NOTE At this moment, if you changed the port to 1922 as example, after the NAS is restarted the port on the ssh service is switched back to 22 while in the UGOS you will still see 1922.
In order to change it back to 1922, you have to first change it to another value and then to 1922.

For additional settings, click on Advanced Settings as example if you want to allow SSH login only from local network.

Then click on Save and Apply. SSH service is now enabled

Open putty installed on Step 1
On the Host name, type your NAS IP address. Type the port previously configured on UGOS at Step 2, type a name to save your connection and click on Save

Now find your session name on the list and double click on it, or single click and then Load.

On the first login, you have to accept the host key to be added in putty cache for future connection

Now type your UGOS username and password

Connection done, you can run as example a command to find your username ID and group ID , required to create docker containers.

id

The command will return for user ugreentest the uid=1000 and we see is part of group admin (10) and group users (100)