Configuration with Docker

If you are running TimescaleDB in a Docker container, there are two different ways to modify your PostgreSQL configuration. You can edit the PostgreSQL configuration file inside the Docker container, or you can set parameters at the command prompt.

Edit the PostgreSQL configuration file inside Docker

You can start the Docker container, and then use a text editor to edit the PostgreSQL configuration file directly. The configuration file requires one parameter per line. Blank lines are ignored, and you can use a # symbol at the beginning of a line to denote a comment.

1. Start your Docker instance

   docker start timescaledb

2. Open a shell

   docker exec -i -t timescaledb /bin/bash

3. Open the configuration file in your preferred text editor

   vi /var/lib/postgresql/data/postgresql.conf

4. Restart the container to reload the configuration

   docker restart timescaledb

Setting parameters at the command prompt

If you don’t want to open the configuration file to make changes, you can also set parameters directly from the command prompt inside your Docker container, using the -c option. For example:

docker run -i -t timescale/timescaledb:latest-pg18 postgres -c max_wal_size=2GB