Hello Unraid Community!

Are you tired of "Dependency Hell" every time your server reboots? We’ve all seen it: Sonarr failing because Gluetun isn't ready, or Nextcloud throwing a 500 error because MariaDB is still initializing.

Unraid's native autostart is a great start, but modern self-hosting requires a real conductor. I’ve built a tool to transform your boot sequence from a "random race" into a "synchronized symphony."

🚀 What is Unraid Docker Startup Orchestrator?

It is a 100% client-side web interface that allows you to design, organize, and automate your Docker startup sequence. It generates a robust Bash script tailored for the User Scripts plugin.

✨ Advanced Features

• 🧠 Automated Pre-Classification (The "Brain"): This is the core of the tool. When you import your containers, the orchestrator doesn't just list them. It uses a dual-layer engine to automatically group them:

  1. Internal Heuristics: Instantly recognizes databases (Redis, Postgres, MariaDB), network tools, and proxies.

  2. Unraid AppFeed Integration: It queries the official Community Applications API to identify unknown containers and place them in the correct category (Downloaders, Media, Tools, etc.).

• ⏳ Intelligent Polling (wait_for logic): Forget static sleep commands. The generated script actively polls the Docker API every 2 seconds. It ensures a container is actually running before triggering the next one.

• 📂 Multi-Tiered Dependency Groups: Organize your stack into logical tiers (Infrastructure > Databases > Backends > Frontends). You can set custom pauses between groups to allow for internal initialization.

• 🔗 Smart Internal Sorting: Even within a group, the tool knows that a "pre-dependency" (like Jackett or Flaresolverr) should start before its main application (Radarr/Sonarr).

• 📋 Real-Time Monitoring & Logs: The script logs every action to /tmp/docker_start_order.log. You can monitor the boot process in real-time from your terminal using tail -f.

• 💾 Config Management: Export your layout to a JSON file. Import it back later to make quick adjustments.

• 🔒 Privacy by Design: Everything happens in your browser. No server-side processing, no data collection. Your configuration stays yours.

🛠️ How to get started?

1. Import: Use the provided SSH command to fetch your current container list.

2. Organize: Let the Auto-Classification do the heavy lifting, then fine-tune with drag-and-drop.

3. Generate: Copy the generated code into a new User Script in Unraid.

4. Set & Forget: Set the schedule to "At Startup of Array".

   ⚠️ Important: Disable the native "Autostart" for these containers in the Docker tab to avoid conflicts.

Web Tool

Source Code

I'm eager to hear your thoughts! This tool was built to save time and gray hair for Unraid admins.

Edited April 6Apr 6 by cbh17000
change name github

This is…interesting.

This worked great. I don't have a ton of docker containers, only about 20 maybe, but some of them do have database dependencies like immich so being able to have redis postgresql open up before it is helpful if not entirely necessary. I'm also a visual person so being able to rearrange my containers into groups I want via your webtool and then set delays for things was super helpful. I'm not a coder, I don't have tons of experience or the desire to learn to do it but this helped me do something I've wanted to do for a while now. Thanks!

edit: Just thought I'd add one thing I found a bit troublesome with the web tool. Once you import all of your containers and (in my case) generate the groups automatically, moving containers from the uncategorized group to a specific group, there's a very small window to move the container to that group, essentially only between the existing containers.

Example Gif of issue in edit

Edited March 26Mar 26 by Kazem

I'm so glad it was helpful!

🚀 V2 is coming soon!

Dear users,

I'm currently finalizing V2 of the Docker Boot Orchestrator for Unraid! 🎉

On the agenda:

✅ An equally intuitive interface, but with advanced features

✅ Simplified container management

✅ New time-saving features

It will be released soon! 🕒