# Self Hosted Obsidian Sync With CouchDB • Obsidian Garden

# Self Hosted Obsidian Sync With CouchDB

- Main documentation
- Setting up couchdb

## Setting up environment

First, you should create `docker-compose.yml` with the following contents:

    version: '3'services:  couchserver:    container_name: obsidian__database    image: couchdb    restart: always    ports:      - "5984:5984"    environment:      - COUCHDB_USER=user      - COUCHDB_PASSWORD=somepassword    volumes:      - ./couchdb/dbdata:/opt/couchdb/data      - ./couchdb/local.ini:/opt/couchdb/etc/local.ini

Then create initial config at `./couchdb/local.ini`:

    [couchdb]
    single_node=true
    max_document_size=50000000
    max_http_request_size=4294967296

    [chttpd]
    require_valid_user = true

    [chttpd_auth]
    require_valid_user = true
    authentication_redirect = /_utils/session.html

    [httpd]
    WWW-Authenticate = Basic realm="couchdb"
    enable_cors = true

    [cors]
    origins = app://obsidian.md,capacitor://localhost,http://localhost
    credentials = true
    headers = accept, authorization, content-type, origin, referer
    methods = GET, PUT, POST, HEAD, DELETE
    max_age = 3600

Then, in order to have sync on mobile devices, we will need a reverse proxy with nginx at `/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/obsidian-couchdb`:

    server {    listen 80;    listen [::]:80;    server_name couchdb.yourhost.com;    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;}server {        listen 443 ssl http2;        listen [::]:443 ssl http2;        ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourhost.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot        ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourhost.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot        ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourhost.com/chain.pem;        server_name couchdb.yourhost.com;        client_max_body_size 200M;        location / {                proxy_redirect off;                proxy_set_header Host $host;                proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;                proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5984;        }}

## Setting up Obsidian

1. Install `Self-hosted LiveSync` plugin
2. Change host to `https://yourhost.com`
3. Specify username and password
4. Press `test`, then `fetch database`