Installing Bitwarden RS on Raspberry Pi

Bitwarden is an Open Source password management tool. It can be used to store credentials and to fill out logon forms automatically (via plugins). Available as a commercial service, the open source nature of it makes it possible to run Bitwarden in a self-hosted environment. Docker images are provided by Bitwarden. The official installation is rather complex and will install around 12 containers. The CPU and memory footprint is considerably high, especially when only a few users is going to use the service.

Luckily, there is a lighter version of Bitwarden available: Vaultwarden (formerly known as Bitwarden_RS). The provided Docker image contains all services and consumes less resources. It can run on a Raspberry Pi 2. That’s what I did. I installed Docker on my Raspberry Pi 2 and then installed Vaultwarden.

• GitHub
• Docker Hub

Installation

To run Vaultwarden on Docker, just start it and provide some startup parameters. Take care of the ports. The example is mapping external port 8888 to Vaultwarden port 80 (web) and web socket port 3012. Provide a data directory for permanent storage.

docker pull vaultwarden/server:latest
docker run -d --name bitwarden 
-v /bw-data/:/data/ 
-p 8888:80 
-p 3012:3012 
vaultwarden/server:latest

More secure setup

The above example is going to install and run Vaultwarden in the standard configuration. This is most likely not what you want. You might to disallow signups and invitations.

docker run -d --name bitwarden 
-e SIGNUPS_ALLOWED=false 
-e INVITATIONS_ALLOWED=false 
-v /bw-data/:/data/ 
-p 8888:80 
-p 3012:3012 
vaultwarden/server:latest

The be able to access the admin page, you need to activate it and provide an access token.

docker run -d –name bitwarden -e SIGNUPS_ALLOWED=false -e INVITATIONS_ALLOWED=false -e ADMIN_TOKEN= R0aicfhdUpsKuPtE3076bz3QWERTZeFEOnnnO57LGUq62Dazj/123Erf65XIvQR0 -v /bw-data/:/data/ -p 8888:80 -p 3012:3012 vaultwarden/server:latest

A token can be generated by running:

openssl rand -base64 48

Sample output

R0aicfhdUpsKuPtE3076bz3QWERTZeFEOnnnO57LGUq62Dazj/123Erf65XIvQR0

Additional security like 2FA might also be on your security list. Only after securing your server, make it external available.

Validation

Check if Vaultwarden is running.

docker ps -a

Initial login

With Vaultwarden running, the web UI is accessible under the URL http://<docker server>:8888

Create a new user.