Benefits for users

Benefits for user admins

Benefits for system admins

Community Support

For people using a self-hosted Community Edition instance, support is provided by the community via GitHub Issues.

Server Pro Support

For customers using a self-hosted Server Pro instance we will provide reasonable support to assist with the resolution of technical issues relating to the installation, configuration, maintenance and general usage of Server Pro, to a single, named staff member.

Support services for Server Pro specifically exclude:

• Direct support for the LaTeX language including layout, typesetting, and programming errors;

• Defects or errors resulting from any modifications to Server Pro unless made, instructed, or approved by us in writing;

• Support for any version of Server Pro other than:

  • The two (2) most current point releases of the current major version; and

  • The last released point release of the previous major version;

• Support for any non-current version of Server Pro that is more than twenty-four (24) months old;

• Any fault in the environment or in any software or hardware used in conjunction with Server Pro; and

• Defects or errors caused by the use with any software products other than those specifically certified for use with Server Pro in this documentation.

Server Pro 3.5.13

Release date: 2023-10-06

Image ID: 4f2113a3c903 (Community Edition Image ID: 0038aa2cc383)

• Fixes history soft retry cronjob, which was executing the operation as a hard retry.

Server Pro 3.5.12

Release date: 2023-09-25

Image ID: af3621af7b83 (Community Edition Image ID: a461cd37241b)

• Workaround a bug in the History Migration Scripts when multiple updates have the same version.

Server Pro 3.5.11

Release date: 2023-08-10

Image ID: dcfec83c5091 (Community Edition Image ID: 6f8a5409f146)

• Fixed a bug in the History Migration Scripts when large deleted documents exist.

• Extended the History Migration Cleanup Script to free up mongo storage space.

Server Pro 3.5.10

Release date: 2023-07-20

Image ID: f83dc1e03fcf (Community Edition Image ID: 373b0b94b156)

This release includes security updates.

Server Pro 3.5.9

Release date: 2023-07-14

Image ID: d746f967e231 (Community Edition Image ID: 25aa7097b27b)

This release includes security updates.

Server Pro 3.5.8

Release date: 2023-06-29

Image ID: 03c294380d2c (Community Edition Image ID: 39d691cb806e)

Fixes a bug preventing anonymous users from adding changes to the Project History when Full Project History is enabled.

Server Pro 3.5.7

Release date: 2023-06-01

Image ID: 65cc2f2e2af6 (Community Edition Image ID: cc998380cad7)

Fixes a bug in the History Migration Scripts when using --force-clean that prevented migration reattempts in certain situations.

Server Pro 3.5.6

Release date: 2023-05-04

Image ID: 0dee80908e57 (Community Edition Image ID: 89c35e1b6ec8)

Added clean_sl_history_data script to cleanup legacy history data.

Server Pro 3.5.5

Release date: 2023-03-21

Image ID: 35bda2a2a778 (Community Edition Image ID: 9db95d7e350c)

This release fixes the shutdown sequence in Server Pro / Community Edition.

Server Pro 3.5.4

Release date: 2023-03-20

Image ID: 44d12da219d7 (Community Edition Image ID: 563d00cfad2a)

This release disables the primary email check feature in Server Pro / Community Edition.

Server Pro 3.5.3

Release date: 2023-03-07

Image ID: 8c7444b2e929 (Community Edition Image ID: 60bef8c323a5)

This release includes a performance improvement to the Full Project History migration script.

Server Pro 3.5.2

Release date: 2023-03-07

Image ID: dca7282041af (Community Edition Image ID: cd45ea2957b0)

This release includes several improvements to the Full Project History migration scripts.

Server Pro 3.5.1

Release date: 2023-02-28

Image ID: 6a64c0f67077 (Community Edition Image ID: bfa72dc4430f)

This release includes a fix for a German translation in the editor.

Server Pro 3.5.0

Release date: 2023-02-13

Image ID: f6963b4eaad9 (Community Edition Image ID: 678db4634722)

This release includes the Full Project History feature that is already available in our SaaS offering, overleaf.com and brings several improvements for users:

Tracks changes in binary files, which is unsupported in the legacy system. There is support for labelled versions. The system is in general more robust, there is less chance of data loss.

After upgrading your instance all new projects will be using Full Project History by default (unless opting-out, see environment variables in Configuring Overleaf). Existing projects will continue using the legacy History system, until they’re migrated.

Full Project History migration instructions.

This release also ships with official support for S3 compatible object storage. This could either be a self-hosted solution, like min.io or ceph.io, or AWS S3. The S3 based storage backend can optionally replaces the local fs/NFS storage backend. You can find a wiki page on setting up S3 in Server Pro and another wiki page describes the migration process for moving existing data into S3. With S3-compatible object storage support we prepared Server Pro for horizontal scaling, look out for news here soon!

Bugfixes

• Remove empty "Advanced" tab in admin panel.

Other changes

• Added cleanup scripts to flush redis data on container shutdown. This might increase the time it takes to stop the instance to up to 1 minute. If you're not using the Overleaf Toolkit, you need to specify the timeouts in your container configuration.

• German translation coverage significantly improved (d5d3fcd)

Server Pro 3.4.0

Release date: 2023-01-11

Image ID: 07f5275feec5 (Community Edition Image ID: 009c80a8d63e)

This release includes database migrations. Please backup your database before upgrading.

New Features

• New environment variable SHARELATEX_STATUS_PAGE_URL can be set to a custom status page URL. This URL is displayed when the site is closed for maintenance and on 500 errors.

Bugfixes

• Fix parsing of authnContext in passport-saml options (Server Pro).

• Fix disconnect users option in site admin panel (Server Pro).

Other changes

• Drop limit for output.pdf requests. This should mitigate errors compiling a project several times in a short time.

• Memory management improvements during file upload process. These changes reduce pressure on the disk from fewer IO operations.

Server Pro 3.3.2

Release date: 2022-11-15

Image ID: c03e78f10d6d (Community Edition Image ID: eab840a50369)

This release includes a fix for a server error that can stop the project dashboard from opening:

TypeError: (project.archived || []).some is not a function

The fix sports a new migration for converting the archived and trashed state of projects from a per-project setting to a per-user setting.

Server Pro 3.3.1

Release date: 2022-10-18

Image Id: 9194fb1de6b3 (no Community Edition image)

This release includes a security update addressing potential vulnerabilities with SAML auth provider integration.

Server Pro 3.3.0

Release date: 2022-10-13

Image ID: 56f044d08198 (Community Edition Image ID: 4c4bad165ea6)

This new release of Server Pro includes a MongoDB migration affecting several collections. Please ensure you have a database backup before upgrading.

For CE users, and Server Pro users that don't run Sandboxed Compiles there is a change in how Latex packages are installed, now requiring to run tlmgr path add again after every use of tlmgr install in order to correctly symlink all the binaries into the system path.

New Features

• Stop on First Error compilation mode

• User/Project audit logs can now store more than 200 entries.

Other changes

• HTML content in Template descriptions is now sanitized using sanitize-html default options. This might affect your existing templates.

Server Pro 3.2.2

Release date: 2022-09-19

Image ID: 20e80bd600fb (Community Edition Image ID: 8552c59519a7)

Bugfixes

• Fixes TexLive package setup (non-sandboxed compiles) (https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/issues/1044)

Server Pro 3.2.1

Release date: 2022-08-26

Image ID: 3817bd0d07a4 (Community Edition Image ID: 31cc6bc2bfa7)

Bugfixes

• Fixes source editor not being displayed (https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/issues/1043)

Server Pro 3.2.0

Release date: 2022-08-16

Image ID: 4db483917643 (Community Edition Image ID: 1bce84a47f1f)

This new release of Server Pro includes several new features. It also requires updating Mongo version to 4.4. Upgrade instructions are available here. Please ensure you have a database backup before upgrading.

New Features

• User Activity and License Usage information (with a count of active users) is now displayed in the Admin Panel.

• PDF Preview Detach.

• User Dictionary entries can now be deleted from the Editor Settings panel.

• TexLive 2022 is available for instances running Sandboxed Compiles. Check the documentation for instructions to upgrade. TexLive 2022 is also the default version for instances not running Sandboxed Compiles.

Bugfixes

• Fixed history diff navigation.

Server Pro 3.1.1

Release date: 2022-08-10

Image ID: eb5802bfd8a4 (Community Edition Image ID: 401c5a25016d)

Bugfixes

• Fixes history diff navigation (https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/issues/1035)

Server Pro 3.1.0

Release date: 2022-05-17

Image ID: 699e7c990b0f (Community Edition Image ID: 9c9fe33828a0)

This release requires updating Mongo version to 4.2. Upgrade instructions are available here. Please ensure you have a database backup before upgrading.

New Features

• Symbol Palette

Other changes

• TexLive 2021 is available for instances running Sandboxed Compiles. Check the documentation for instructions to upgrade.

• The path of the application inside the container has changed from /var/www/sharelatex to /overleaf; if you have bind mounts that use the old path, they will need to be updated.

• Many small improvements and bugfixes.

Server Pro 3.0.1

Release date: 2021-10-05

Image ID: 5e87b3c5ad41 (Community Edition Image ID: 9155d8a13aaa)

This major release includes migrations that update the database in a backwards incompatible format. Please ensure you have a database backup before upgrading, in case of roll-back you will not be able to read data in the new format.

This update brings general performance and stability improvements to the application, along with many small improvements and bugfixes.

We've recently updated the way we tag our docker images. In addition to 3.0.1, we're also tagging the new version as 3 and 3.0, representing the latest major and minor versions for the 3.x.x branch respectively. These new tags will be updated again when a new minor or hotfix version is published.

latest tag won't be immediately updated to this new major version. If you're using a docker-compose.yml please update your image tag to 3, 3.0 or 3.0.1. Toolkit users can continue using the bin/upgrade script as usual.

Important: before upgrading to this new major version you need to upgrade to version 2.7.1 first.

Troubleshooting

Duplicate Keys

A migration may occasionally fail due to unexpected duplicate entries in a mongo collection.

Duplicate keys in tags collection

If upgrading from 2.7.1 to 3.0.1 fails with messages containing MongoError: Error during migrate "20190912145029_create_tags_indexes": E11000 duplicate key error collection: sharelatex.tags index: user_id_1_name_1 dup key: {<…>} this means that one of your users has multiple tags/folders with the same name.

To recover, revert to your 2.7.1 backups and ask the user to make their tag/folder names unique. (The user id and specific tag name will be reported in the error message, so you can contact the affected user and mention the specific tag name that is problematic.) Then attempt the upgrade again.

You can also attempt to detect multiple tags in advance, before you upgrade, with the following aggregate:

docker exec -it mongo mongo
use sharelatex

db.tags.aggregate([
  {$group: {
    _id: {name: "$name", user_id: "$user_id"},
    count: {$sum: 1}
  }},
  {$match: {count: {$gt: 1}}},
  {$sort: {count: -1}}
])

If it returns no results, there are no duplicate tags, and the migration should succeed.

Duplicate keys in contacts collection

If you see the error MongoError: Error during migrate "20190912145001_create_contacts_indexes": E11000 duplicate key error collection: sharelatex.contacts index: user_id_1 dup key{<…>} this indicates a similar problem in the contacts collection. You can check how many entries are affected with the following command:

docker exec -it mongo mongo
use sharelatex

db.contacts.aggregate([
  {$group: {
    _id: {user_id: "$user_id"},
    count: {$sum: 1}
  }},
  {$match: {count: {$gt: 1}}},
  {$sort: {count: -1}}
])

The contacts collection is a cache of names which appear as completions in the "Share Project" modal, it is not critical data. You can remove individual duplicate entries with the command

db.contacts.deleteOne({ "user_id" : ObjectId("...") })

where the ObjectId value should be taken from the list of duplicates. When the duplicate contacts have been removed, the migration should succeed.

SAML initialisation error

You might see a cert is required error when upgrading from Server Pro 2.6.2 or earlier if SHARELATEX_SAML_CERT is not provided.

If you come across the issue, please add the SHARELATEX_SAML_CERT value, and update your instance to 2.7.1 before attempting to upgrade to 3.x.x.

The 3.5.x release of the Community Edition includes the Full Project History feature that is already available in our SaaS offering, overleaf.com

After upgrading your instance to Overleaf CE 3.5.13, all new projects will be using Full Project History by default. Existing projects will continue using the legacy History system, until they’re migrated.

Note: If you upgrade to 3.5.13 and decide to downgrade to an earlier version, then you should restore from a full system backup. The history of projects created in 3.5.13 is not compatible with earlier versions of Overleaf CE.

The new Full Project History brings several improvements for users:

• It tracks changes in binary files, which is unsupported in the legacy system.

• There is support for labelled versions.

• The system is in general more robust, there is less chance of data loss.

Check Full Project History documentation for more information about full project history.

Migrating existing projects

$ bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "curl http://localhost:3000/status"
web sharelatex is alive (api)%

# Overleaf Toolkit users:
$ bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "cd /overleaf/services/web; VERBOSE_LOGGING=true node scripts/history/migrate_history.js --force-clean --fix-invalid-characters --convert-large-docs-to-file"

# legacy docker-compose.yml users:
$ docker exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "cd /overleaf/services/web; VERBOSE_LOGGING=true node scripts/history/migrate_history.js --force-clean --fix-invalid-characters --convert-large-docs-to-file"

Migrated Projects  :  1
Total Projects     :  51
Remaining Projects :  51
Total history records to migrate: 98
Starting migration...
Migrating project: 63d29b5772dd80015a81bffe
migration result { upgraded: true, historyType: 'NoneWithoutConversion' }
Migrating project: 63d29c2e72dd80015a81c0a2
migration result { upgraded: true, historyType: 'NoneWithoutConversion' }

// …

Migration complete
==================
Projects migrated:  51
Projects failed:  0
Done.

Projects failed:  0
Done.

Offline migration

To prevent users from being able to log in while the history migration script is running, please follow these steps:

• Log into your Overleaf instance with an admin account

• Click on the Admin button and choose Manage Site

• Click the Open/Close Editor tab

• Click on the Close Editor button

• Click on the Disconnect all users button

Once this has been done, if any users are logged in they will get redirected to the maintenance page, and any new users visiting the log-in page will see the maintenance page and won't be able to log in.

Online migration

It is possible to run the migration scripts while the application is still running. There are a few considerations to take into account:

• The migration process is CPU intensive, you should monitor resource usage while the script is running.

• With a high --concurrency value, the event loop in some services (track-changes in particular) might experience some blocking, which would lead to a degraded UX experience. We recommend starting with the default --concurrency=1 value.

• You can stop the script at any time. Starting it again will resume the migration when you left it. This is useful in case you prefer to run the migration in less busy hours (e.g. at night).

Our recommendation is to close the site and run the migration offline in a maintenance window when your project count is less than 1000 projects (db.projects.count()). If the number of projects is large you can run the script and monitor its progress, then decide whether to continue running it online or offline based on your particular case.

Clean up legacy history data

A script to cleanup legacy history data was added in Server Pro 3.5.6, 4.0.6 and 4.1.0.

bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "cd /overleaf/services/web; node scripts/history/clean_sl_history_data.js"

The script can be run after all the projects have been migrated. It can also be used to free some space while performing an online migration.

Troubleshooting

We will add troubleshooting advice here. Please note that while we normally offer support only to Server Pro customers, given the nature of this migration, we will also do our best to support CE customers who experience problems specific to the full project history migration.

If the full project history migration script fails (i.e. exits with an error or prints a non-zero number of failed projects), please send the following details to our support team by email support+historymigration@overleaf.com, detailing:

Subject: Full project history migration problem

• Instance Type: CE or Server Pro (delete as appropriate)

• Installation Type: Overleaf toolkit or docker-compose.yml or other (delete as appropriate)

• Version: 3.5.x (toolkit: $ cat config/version)

• Migration script output (which should be located in the container under /overleaf/services/web)

• Migrated Projects: (as per migration script output)

• Total Projects: (as per migration script output)

• Remaining Projects: (as per migration script output)

• Duration of the migration:

• bin/doctor output (when using toolkit)

• Toolkit version: $ git rev-parse HEAD (when using toolkit)

Consider attaching the log files for the history-v1, project-history and track-changes services to the email. You can find these at /var/log/sharelatex inside the sharelatex container and export them like this:

$ docker cp sharelatex:/var/log/sharelatex/history-v1.log history-v1.log
$ docker cp sharelatex:/var/log/sharelatex/project-history.log project-history.log
$ docker cp sharelatex:/var/log/sharelatex/track-changes.log track-changes.log

Please redact any sensitive information from the log files before attaching them.

Finding broken file trees

The migration may fail for projects which have a malformed file tree (for example, where filenames are empty). You can find a list of these problems using the find_malformed_filetrees script which checks all projects in the database:

$ bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "cd /overleaf/services/web; node scripts/find_malformed_filetrees.js"
BAD PATH: 123456789012345678901234 rootFolder.0.1.2.3
BAD PATH: 123456789012345678901234 rootFolder.0.4.5.6
...

To fix the invalid paths, use the fix_malformed_filetree script, running the command once for each bad path:

$ bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "cd /overleaf/services/web; node scripts/fix_malformed_filetree.js 123456789012345678901234 rootFolder.0.1.2.3"
$ bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "cd /overleaf/services/web; node scripts/fix_malformed_filetree.js 123456789012345678901234 rootFolder.0.4.5.6"
...

Downgrading projects from full project history to legacy history

If there is a project that has been migrated to full project history but you want to go back to the legacy history, use the downgrade_project script as follows:

$ bin/docker-compose exec sharelatex /bin/bash -c "cd /overleaf/services/web; PROJECT_ID=YOUR

We recommend that the on-site administrator of your Overleaf instance has:

• General IT administration skills

• Familiarity with Linux command line tools

• General networking knowledge and troubleshooting skills

• Experience backing up and restoring production systems

• Experience running applications using Docker is a bonus

• Experience with coordinating maintenance windows for upgrades of live production systems

We find that on-site administrators with these skills will be able to provide the best experience for users of Overleaf at your organization.

Server Pro 2.7.1

Release date: 2021-09-16

Image ID: 823f6cb592f4 (Community Edition Image ID: 4f7d059759d2)

Bugfixes

• This release includes a security update preventing editor sessions from being disconnected.

New Features

• An image placeholder is displayed when a template preview is not generated (due to having ENABLE_CONVERSIONS environment variable set to false).

Server Pro 2.7.0

Release date: 2021-07-12

Image ID: e8efe0e39698 (Community Edition Image ID: 9ca6a3256fb6)

Bugfixes

• Fixed comment attribution in projects with anonymous comments

• Fixed collaborators redirected out of a project when the owner edited the collaborators

• Fixed redis connections in the host machine when no password authentication is defined #895

• Fixed host headers in i18n installs #896

Other changes

• SHARELATEX_SAML_CERT is now required for SAML setup.

• Many small improvements and bugfixes

Server Pro 2.6.2

Release date: 2021-05-20

Image ID: 1f1f4f1c4f02 (Community Edition Image ID: 2d8a8b6d1930)

Bugfixes

• Fixed references service crashing with .bib files larger than 6mb.

• Fixed incorrect emailing attempt during user registration, which displayed an error message in the logs.

• Fixed LDAP registration when firstName and lastName contain a list of variations with non-ascii characters.

Server Pro 2.6.1

Release date: 2021-04-23

Image ID: dd382a10a3e5 (Community Edition Image ID: cfd4ec616219)

This release includes performance and stability improvements for handling larger projects. These improvements are backed by changes to data structures in the Mongo database. The changes are implemented in a backwards compatible way for reading existing data, but new data is written in a backwards incompatible format. You may be able to upgrade without making any changes to the database at this time, but in case of a roll-back, you will not be able to read all the newly written data. A future release will migrate the old data to the new format. As with previous updates, please ensure you have a backup before upgrading.

Bugfixes

• This release includes important security updates. It fixes some potential XSS vulnerabilities and upgrades to node 12 ahead of node 10 reaching end of life on 30 Apr 2021.

• Fallback linearisation breaks PDF/A when not using sandboxed compiles.

New Features

• SAML: Add /saml/meta endpoint to fetch Service Provider Metadata.

• New configuration parameters for SMTP: SHARELATEX_EMAIL_SMTP_NAME and SHARELATEX_EMAIL_SMTP_LOGGER.

• Added configurable AWS Region to email settings (SHARELATEX_EMAIL_AWS_SES_REGION).

• Allow Nginx connection limits to be changed.

• Administrators can now promote other users to administrator again.

• Added ADDITIONAL_TEXT_EXTENSIONS for customisation of editable file types.

Other

• UI and performance improvements.

• All services have been upgraded to Node v12 from v10.

Note: 2.6.1 is the initial release on the 2.6.x line, version 2.6.0 has not been published.

Server Pro 2.5.2

Release date: 2021-01-26

Image ID: 8afec2bb0ace (Community Edition Image ID: 62b08784fc5d)

Bugfixes

• Fixed account activation with uppercase emails (https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/issues/819)

Server Pro 2.5.1

Release date: 2021-01-14

Image ID: e9a932e0effd (Community Edition Image ID: 5d6493ce30fe)

Bugfixes

• Fixed log rotation

Server Pro 2.5.0

Release date: 2020-11-20

Image ID: 7ae2382c68b3 (Community Edition Image ID: 6e6f3526af69)

New Features

• File Outline.

• TexLive 2020 is now available.

• Mongo version updated to 4.0 (see upgrade instructions).

Bugfixes

• Fixed anonymous read/write project links redirecting to the login page.

• HTML code in SHARELATEX_LEFT_FOOTER is now correctly displayed.

• Fixed SHARELATEX_CUSTOM_EMAIL_FOOTER not working.

Other

• This will be the last CE/SP release where we officially support IE11. The next release in Q1 2021 will no longer be tested on IE11.

Server Pro 2.4.2

Release date: 2020-10-5

Image ID: 83c76915b65a (Community Edition Image ID: 814858a6bb38)

Bugfixes

• Fixed anonymous read/write sharing

• Fixed html links in left footer

Server Pro 2.4.1

Release date: 2020-08-26

Image ID: 6cf8c22f2903 (Community Edition Image ID: 4be5fcb14878)

No changes from 2.4.0. This release is just to keep the version numbering consistent between Server Pro and Community Edition.

Server Pro 2.4.0

Release date: 2020-08-20

Image ID: 6cf8c22f2903 (Community Edition Image ID: 2ff144360052)

New Features

• Audit log for users' account settings updates

Bugfixes

• This release fixes an important security issue: previously, it was possible for a specially crafted websocket request to bypass project authorization checks. https://github.com/overleaf/real-time/pull/177

Other changes

• Many small improvements and bugfixes

Server Pro 2.3.1

Release date: 2020-06-30

Image ID: 6fc8c7709df6 (Community Edition Image ID: 050f166647d2)

Bugfixes

• Fixed sync between editor and pdf with synctex when not using sandboxed compiles.

Server Pro 2.3.0

Release date: 2020-06-11

Image ID: feb1b349654b (Community Edition Image ID: 843316001077)

New Features

• TexLive version selector

  • (when using sandboxed compiles)

• Show latexmk output in compile logs

Bugfixes

• Fixed broken LuaLatex builds when not using sandboxed compiles

• Fixed PDF/A validation broken when not using sandboxed compiles

• Fixed project uploads from zip files with many large text files

Other changes

• gravatar.com service is no longer used

• Deleted documents no longer count toward overall project file limit

• Improvements to dashboard tag management

• Many small improvements and bugfixes

Server Pro 2.2.1

Release date: 2020-03-10

Image ID: 11dce4970997

Bugfixes

• TexLive image not being persisted in project entities (project.imageName field)

Server Pro 2.2.0

Release date: 2020-02-10

Image ID: 4b4d9f8d4fad (Community Edition Image ID: 0867310d1151)

Bugfixes

• Incorrect template layout is now fixed

• Node upgrade to fix CVE-2019-15605, CVE-2019-15606 and CVE-2019-15604

New Features

• reCAPTCHA is now disabled

• Removed external access to Google Fonts.

• Other minor improvements and bugfixes.

Server Pro 2.1.1

Release date: 2020-01-21

Image ID: 23f9a28eeef2 (Community Edition Image ID: e01ae3fd29ac)

Bugfixes

• Fixed unable to share projects via email address.

Server Pro 2.1.0

Release date: 2020-01-14

Image ID: 61a994c2584f (Community Edition Image ID: 503763f211f2)

New Features

• Email confirmation banner can be disabled with the new environment variable EMAIL_CONFIRMATION_DISABLED: 'true'

• New Archival/trashing workflow

• Project ownership can be changed from the admin panel.

Other Changes

• Admin: improved search using regular expressions

• Other minor improvements and bugfixes.

Server Pro 2.0.3

Release date: 2019-12-06

Image ID: d29f5373eca9

2.0.3 is a Server Pro-only release, no Community Edition has been published.

Bugfixes

• Fixed unable to share projects via email address.

Other Changes

• Reenabled recaptcha, which was the root cause of the issue above.

Server Pro 2.0.2

Release date: 2019-11-26

Image ID: 9907ccc100e5 (Community Edition Image ID: de647e8b462c)

Bugfixes

• Fixed link sharing for anonymous users when SHARELATEX_ALLOW_PUBLIC_ACCESS: 'true' and SHARELATEX_ALLOW_ANONYMOUS_READ_AND_WRITE_SHARING: 'true'.

• Fixed read-only access to shared projects.

• Fixed SAML logout (Server Pro only).

• Fixed sync between editor and pdf with synctex (Server Pro only).

• Fixed track changes slow to commit.

Other Changes

• Disabled recaptcha (Server Pro only).

• Importing external files is disabled by default.

• IMPORTANT: A new SYNCTEX_BIN_HOST_PATH is required when using Sibling Containers. Check the setup instructions in the wiki: https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/wiki/Server-Pro:-sandboxed-compiles#mapping-the-location-of-synctex-in-the-host.

Server Pro 2.0.1

Release date: 2019-10-18

Image ID: cb014e03204a (Community Edition Image ID: 708b20c0a403)

Bugfixes

• Fixed "Delete Forever" button has no effect.

• Fixed admin creation using CLI.

Known issues

• SyncTeX not working on Sandboxed Compiles (see workaround instructions).

Server Pro 2.0.0

Release date: 2019-10-09

Image ID: 8fdd3419f5a5 (Community Edition Image ID: 2cdbdc229d4f)

A lot has changed in the last few years, with ShareLaTeX joining forces with Overleaf to create one incredible authoring platform. Now that the merge is complete it's time to release a new version of ShareLaTeX Overleaf Community Edition and Server Pro!

New Features

This release brings Community Edition and Server Pro up to date with the cloud-based version of Overleaf. A lot has changed since the last release, with too many bug fixes and small improvements to count, but here are a few highlights:

• A brand new user interface theme

• Improved project dashboard

• A new interface for creating (or uploading) files in a project

• Linked Files: import a file from another project.

• Improved History view

Server Pro

This release of Server Pro includes a few new premium features:

• Rich Text mode: write your document like a rich-text document, backed by nice clean LaTeX

• Improved Sandboxed Compiles: no more fiddling with group permissions (see below)

• Improved Admin Interface: now you can inspect the state of a project from the Admin page, plus many more small improvements

Changes to the Docker-Compose file format

This release adds a few new options to the docker environment. We recommend using our updated example docker-compose.yml file and updating it to reflect your old configuration where necessary.

The new variables are:

• ENABLED_LINKED_FILE_TYPES: a comma-separated list-keys, which controls which types of "linked file" are available in the New File modal. Defaults to 'url,project_file', as in the example file.

• ENABLE_CONVERSIONS: If set to 'true', will enable on-the-fly file preview conversions using ImageMagick. Set to another value to disable this feature

• REDIS_HOST: should be set to the name of the Redis host, same as the SHARELATEX_REDIS_HOST variable. In the case of a simple docker-compose based deployment, this will just be 'redis'. This duplication is, unfortunately, necessary in the short term while users migrate to the new Community Edition and Server Pro images, and will be resolved in a later release.

• REDIS_PORT: In case we desire to use the port for Redis other than the default, we need to set the value in REDIS_PORT to be the same as in SHARELATEX_REDIS_HOST, for the same reason described above.

And for Server Pro:

• DOCKER_RUNNER: set to 'true' when enabling Sandboxed Compiles with sibling containers. See the updated documentation on Sandboxed Compiles.

• SYNCTEX_BIN_HOST_PATH (introduced in 2.0.2): set to <your_sharelatex_data_directory>/bin/synctex. Check Sibling Containers documentation for extra context

Changes to Sandboxed Compiles

We've made some changes to the way the Sanboxed Compiles work. In previous versions, the administrators often needed to fiddle with user and group permissions on the docker socket to get Sibling Containers to work. In this release, we've changed all that so it's handled automatically inside the Server Pro container, so it should just work in the majority of cases.

From this release onwards we will no longer support the old "Docker-In-Docker" method of sandboxed compiles, as it has become more and more difficult to get this to work as time goes on. We strongly encourage admins to consider the newer Sibling Containers method as an alternative.

Upgrading TexLive

You can now opt-in to a new version of TeX Live. The default is still TeX Live 2017, but you can find instructions on how to get TeX Live 2018 or later here: https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/wiki/Server-Pro:-sandboxed-compiles#changing-the-texlive-image

Before updating to a newer version of TexLive we strongly recommend backing up your data and update to the latest version of Server Pro available.

Database Migrations

The following database migrations have been added, and will run automatically:

• Alter the structure of the User model to support future work

• Change structure of project.tokens, to enforce uniqueness on the numeric part of a read-and-write sharing token

Administrators and end-users should not notice any change in behaviour due to these migrations.

Support

If anything seems out of place, or you run into any problems while upgrading, please get in touch with us via email at support@overleaf.com

Server Pro 4.2.9

Release date: 2025-03-21

• Server Pro Image ID: dcfa08126e52

• Community Edition Image ID: 8fda0e836de1

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

This is a security release, we updated internal dependencies used by SAML integration.

Server Pro 4.2.8

Release date: 2024-08-13

• Server Pro Image ID: 03df62558008

• Community Edition Image ID: b455e431db42

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

Bug fixes

• Fix for invalid URLs returning 500 instead of 400.

Other changes

• /metrics and /health_check now return 404.

• Security update to prevent remote image loading in Visual Editor.

Server Pro 4.2.7

Release date: 2024-07-12

• Server Pro Image ID: b57040dd7e45

• Community Edition Image ID: 60b9c65a00a7

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

This is a security release. We added stricter controls for accessing project invite details and locked down access to files via the LaTeX compilation service.

We strongly recommend turning on the Sandboxed Compiles feature in Server Pro.

Server Pro 4.2.6

Release date: 2024-06-20

• Server Pro Image ID: e9c52f2dd6df

• Community Edition Image ID: 8ac3da599b94

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

This is a security release. We added stricter controls for creating projects from ZIP URLs.

Server Pro 4.2.5

Release date: 2024-06-11

• Server Pro Image ID: cbe8a3d11874

• Community Edition Image ID: 8ac3da599b94

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

This release provides security updates, bug fixes, and performance enhancements, including:

• Stricter controls to prevent arbitrary JavaScript execution in the project editor.

• Stricter controls to prevent arbitrary CSS loading in the project editor.

• Updated libraries to enhance security and performance.

Server Pro 4.2.4

Release date: 2024-04-17

• Server Pro Image ID: 875dd6e64e96

• Community Edition Image ID: ab1e82612ec9

• Git Bridge Image ID: 455a8c0559a4

Security release

Server Pro 4.2.4 is a security release for the application runtime.

The Node.js runtime has been upgraded to 18.20.2. Check the release notes (18.20.1, 18.20.2) for more information.

Other changes

• All services are now using IPv4 in the container

• Adds bin/flush-history-queues and bin/force-history-resyncs utility scripts.

Server Pro 4.2.3

Release date: 2024-02-16

• Server Pro Image ID: a251a3f77aaa

• Community Edition Image ID: 168968a20483

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

Security release

Server Pro 4.2.3 is a security release for the application runtime.

The Node.js runtime has been upgraded to 18.19.1 as per the security announcement upstream. It is worth noting that only CVE-2024-22019, a Denial of Service vulnerability, is applicable to Server Pro.

If an access point to your Server Pro instance is publicly accessible via the internet, such as a login page or redirect to it, it is particularly important that you upgrade to Server Pro version 4.2.3.

Server Pro 4.2.2

Release date: 2024-02-07

• Server Pro Image ID: 166a56c173a1

• Community Edition Image ID: f33f1873b490

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

This release increases security against brute force attacks on projects with link-sharing enabled.

If your Server Pro instance is configured with link-sharing enabled, using SHARELATEX_ALLOW_PUBLIC_ACCESS=true, it is particularly important that you upgrade to Server Pro version 4.2.2.

We would also like to highlight a required upgrade of MongoDB to version 5.0 for the next Server Pro release. MongoDB 4.4 reaches end of life this month, February 2024. We recommend that all customers upgrade to MongoDB 5.0 at their earliest convenience.

Server Pro 4.2.1

Release date: 2023-11-23

• Server Pro Image ID: 3a75a815d297

• Community Edition Image ID: ae1b8c082224

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

This release restores public access to the /saml/meta endpoint.

Server Pro 4.2.0

Release date: 2023-11-10

• Server Pro Image ID: 8bdf368e59f4

• Community Edition Image ID: ae1b8c082224

• Git Bridge Image ID: 59a17a340612

This release separates the web service into an internal API service and a user facing service. Most of the changes in this regard are behind the scenes. The Git integration in Server Pro talks to the Server Pro container "from the outside" and its config needs changing.

• Toolkit users: please upgrade the toolkit (bin/upgrade) before upgrading to Server Pro 4.2.0.

• docker-compose deployments: please update the contents of the GIT_BRIDGE_API_BASE_URL variable:

-GIT_BRIDGE_API_BASE_URL: "http://sharelatex/api/v0/"
+GIT_BRIDGE_API_BASE_URL: "http://sharelatex:3000/api/v0/"

New features

Toolbar in Code Editor

A toolbar has been added to the Code Editor, which provides buttons for basic text styling, and inserting special characters, figures, code for tables, citations, and more.

Add and edit tables without writing code

An easier way to create and edit tables is now available in Server Pro. You can also copy and paste tables and formatted text directly into Visual Editor, without losing the formatting.

Check the blog post for more information.

New toolbar option: Insert figure

The new Insert figure feature allows user to upload or just copy and paste an image file from your computer directly into the editor.

Please refer to the blog post for more information.

Symbol preview in editor autocomplete

Math symbols are now previewed along with the autocomplete options in the editor.

Bug fixes

• XeLatex is now available in the default Tex Live install when not using Sandboxed Compiles.

Other changes

As announced with the previous Server Pro release, the legacy source editor has been removed from the editor. You can read more about the new editing experience on our blog.

The new release also includes the following changes:

• Session length can now be configured with SHARELATEX_COOKIE_SESSION_LENGTH.

• Node runtime has been updated to v18.18.2

Server Pro 4.1.6

Release date: 2023-11-02

• Server Pro Image ID: e40c0df3207f

• Community Edition Image ID: 50437e9a470c

• Git Bridge Image ID: f499a7ef6e64

This release adds several dependency patches bringing performance improvements in different parts of the application.

Server Pro 4.1.5

Release date: 2023-10-25

• Server Pro Image ID: 47246d85316b

• Community Edition Image ID: d909899af648

• Git Bridge Image ID: f499a7ef6e64

This release includes a bug-fix for streaming compression in the history system that could result in hanging flushes. History changes will accumulate in Redis and do not get flushed for permanent storage on disk/S3, leading to potential data-loss when Redis runs out of memory.

We advise all customers to upgrade to this release at their earliest convenience.

Server Pro 4.1.4

Release date: 2023-10-24

• Server Pro Image ID: ef772a5f1148

• Community Edition Image ID: 1bcb24c3b31a

• Git Bridge Image ID: f499a7ef6e64

This release includes additional logging and a new config option for a request timeout.

Server Pro 4.1.3

Release date: 2023-10-06

• Server Pro Image ID: 6661a336d695

• Community Edition Image ID: e46e0cf12e97

• Git Bridge Image ID: f499a7ef6e64

This release includes a fix for the history soft retry cronjob, which was executing the operation as a hard retry.

Server Pro 4.1.2

Release date: 2023-09-27

• Server Pro Image ID: fab9def8230a

• Community Edition Image ID: 1ce6ef6ea798

• Git Bridge Image ID: f499a7ef6e64

This release includes security updates for the Git Bridge.

Server Pro 4.1.1

Release date: 2023-09-05

• Server Pro Image ID: fab9def8230a

• Community Edition Image ID: 1ce6ef6ea798

• Git Bridge Image ID: e5e9753fc979

Bug fixes

• Hide tabs on user admin info pages that are only relevant for overleaf.com

Server Pro 4.1.0

Release date: 2023-08-24

• Server Pro Image ID: a6c6bfe92bd1

• Community Edition Image ID: 1ce6ef6ea798

• Git Bridge Image ID: e5e9753fc979

Security release

Server Pro 4.1 is a security release for the application runtime.

The Node.js runtime has been upgraded from version 16 to 18 ahead of the upcoming deprecation of Node.js 16 on September 11, 2023.

Only Server Pro 4.1 will operate with Node.js 18. All other supported versions of Server Pro require Node.js 16, which is being deprecated. We recommend that all customers upgrade to Server Pro 4.1 at their earliest convenience.

If an access point to your Server Pro instance is publicly accessible via the internet, such as a login page or redirect to it, it is particularly important that you upgrade to Server Pro version 4.1 before September 11, 2023.

History migration

Reminder: History migration for Server Pro 3.5.X and earlier

If you are still using a Server Pro version before 4.0, we recommend starting with the upgrade process immediately. In Server Pro 4.0 we introduced a breaking change in the history system that requires migrating all the history data into the new system in order for Server Pro to function.

The migration process can handle the majority of project histories without any manual work. However, very old projects can contain data that require additional steps to migrate. Starting the migration process now will give our support team adequate time to take a look into your migration issues and help you finish the migration ahead of the EOL date.

History cleanup

Cleanup of orphaned data

Server Pro versions 3.5.11, 4.0.6 and the latest 4.1 release include an updated script that fully deletes orphaned mongo data from the old history system. It is safe to run the script again. Please refer to the documentation on how to run the cleanup script.

Upcoming changes

Retirement of legacy source editor

Server Pro 4.1 will be the last release with the legacy source editor. You can read more about the new editing experience on our blog.

Other changes

Rich Text/Visual Editor enhancements

• The Rich Text/Visual editing experience has been improved.

• The "Source" editor has been renamed to "Code Editor" and the "Rich Text" editor has been renamed to "Visual Editor".

Server Pro 4.0.6

Release date: 2023-08-10

Image ID: da6f6f617532 (Community Edition Image ID: 504b19c82c27)

• Bring back the History Migration Cleanup Script with a fix to free up mongo storage space.

Server Pro 4.0.5

Release date: 2023-07-20

• Server Pro Image ID: bd37a572f01a

• Community Edition Image ID: 883bb853c896

• Git Bridge Image ID: 9bfd98050a43

Bug fixes

• Fixes numbers replaced by underscores when downloading projects (overleaf/overleaf/issues/1133).

Other changes

• Security updates.

Server Pro 4.0.4

Release date: 2023-07-14

• Server Pro Image ID: bcec664460d0

• Community Edition Image ID: 1cf00822f942

• Git Bridge Image ID: 9bfd98050a43

This release includes security updates.

Server Pro 4.0.3

Release date: 2023-06-29

• Server Pro Image ID: 963eb95c3c86

• Community Edition Image ID: 380e3cb72a42

• Git Bridge Image ID: 9bfd98050a43

Fixes a bug preventing anonymous users from adding changes to the Project History.

Server Pro 4.0.2

Release date: 2023-06-08

• Server Pro Image ID: aa27991a39a7

• Community Edition Image ID: 26c75dfb6485

• Git Bridge Image ID: 9bfd98050a43

Fixes a bug navigating through the documentation pages when SHARELATEX_PROXY_LEARN=true.

Server Pro 4.0.1

Release date: 2023-05-30

• Server Pro Image ID: 3014d696b579

• Community Edition Image ID: 26c75dfb6485

• Git Bridge Image ID: 9bfd98050a43

Note: An issue was discovered with version 4.0 so it was never made public. This resulted in 4.0.1 being the first release in the 4.0 release line.

Important: Before upgrading to this new major version you will need to first upgrade your Overleaf Server Pro instance to version 3.5.10 and migrate your projects to the new Full Project History system. Server Pro 4.0.0 will fail to start unless all the projects have been migrated.

Read Full Project History migration instructions.

This major release includes database migrations. Please ensure you have a database backup before upgrading.

MongoDB now needs to run as a Replica Set. If you use an external Mongo database, you might already be running a replica set. If you use the Overleaf Toolkit you just need to pull the Toolkit's latest version. If you don't use the Toolkit, please see the instructions at the end of these release notes.

We’ve also updated the version of Redis to 6.2. This change requires no action other than updating the image version. If you’re using the Overleaf Toolkit, add the environment variable REDIS_IMAGE=redis:6.2 to config/overleaf.rc (or update the version, if it was already defined). If you’re using a custom docker-compose.yml, change the redis container image to redis:6.2.

New features (Server Pro only)

• Overleaf Git integration – See the documentation for instructions to set up the git-bridge in your Server Pro install.

• Enhanced Rich Text functionality – Rich-text commenting and tracked changes.

• Support documentation for horizontal scaling, which allows for increased computing resources for large deployments

New features for Overleaf Community Edition and Server Pro

• A new Source editor in addition to the Legacy editor will be available to users. (The Legacy editor will eventually be retired. If users have any feedback or issues, please fill out this form.) The new Source editor provides better accessibility, and better support for non-latin text.

• Deleted projects and users can be automatically cleaned up after 90 days. This is an opt-in feature that can be enabled by setting the ENABLE_CRON_RESOURCE_DELETION environment variable to true. See the configuration documentation.

Other changes

• TeX Live 2023 is now the default version for instances not running Sandboxed Compiles.

• The limit on a project’s editable content size (the sum of sizes of all editable files) has been increased from 5MB to 7MB.

• General performance and stability improvements to the application, along with many small improvements and bug fixes.

Manually setting up MongoDB as a replica set

The following instructions are not necessary if you use the Overleaf Toolkit or if you use an external Mongo database already configured as a replica set.

If you run MongoDB with docker-compose, add the following command to the mongo container configuration:

mongo:
    command: "--replSet overleaf"

Restart the mongo container then start a mongo shell with docker-compose exec mongo mongo. In that shell, run the following command to initiate the replica set:

rs.initiate({ _id: "overleaf", members: [ { _id: 0, host: "mongo:27017" } ] })

Overleaf is a collaborative LaTeX editor loved by researchers and tech teams. Our cloud version is available at overleaf.com. These docs are specifically for people interested in setting up and maintaining Overleaf Server Pro or Community Edition.

Overview of Server Pro and Community Editon

Both Server Pro and Community Edition run in Docker containers, isolating them from other applications on the same host. This provides an additional layer of security by preventing potential cross-application attacks.

They can run on air-gapped servers, which means they can be completely isolated from other networks, including the Internet. Docker provides tooling for transferring the application from an internet-connected to an air-gapped environment.

After the initial download, no internet connection is required, significantly reducing the risk of external threats.

Stay up to date

Subscribe to our mailing list to get updates on:

• New releases and features

• Enhancements

• Security patches

Quick links

Server Pro 5.3.3

Release date: 2025-03-21

• Server Pro Image ID: 2a15214c521f

• Community Edition Image ID: eb2d221f5f5e

• Git Bridge Image ID: 8aa85fa0d7df

This is a security release, we updated internal dependencies used by SAML integration.

Server Pro 5.3.2

Release date: 2025-03-11

• Server Pro Image ID: 72f7039d52c6

• Community Edition Image ID: eb2d221f5f5e

• Git Bridge Image ID: 8aa85fa0d7df

Bug fixes

• Fixes access to Overleaf documentation when using a proxy for external requests.

Other Changes

• Adds rate limiters to LDAP /login endpoint

Server Pro 5.3.1

Release date: 2025-01-29

• Server Pro Image ID: 6df5c59837a8

• Community Edition Image ID: eb2d221f5f5e

• Git Bridge Image ID: 8aa85fa0d7df

New Features

• OVERLEAF_LOGIN_SUPPORT_TEXT can now be used to display support information underneath the login button. The text will be shown in the login screen and can be used to direct users to internal support or provide guidance related to logging in, creating accounts, etc.

• V1_HISTORY_URL_FOR_GIT_BRIDGE allows separating the history-v1 endpoint for internal traffic (web service → history-v1 service, both in sharelatex container) and external traffic (git-bridge → history-v1, running in separate containers).

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug where account deletion fails in certain situations where email service is not available.

Other changes

• Improve file upload processing. The disk-IO load of large instances can drop by up-to 50%.

• Security updates to the base image and installed packages, along with improvements and bugfixes.

There are some changes in the languages supported by the spelling service.

Server Pro 5.2.1

Release date: 2024-10-24

• Server Pro Image ID: a1b1852ac7bd

• Community Edition Image ID: e187f0ff616c

• Git Bridge Image ID: f09f6dbba5ee

Note: An issue was discovered with version 5.2.0, so it was never made public. This resulted in 5.0.1 being the first release in the 5.0 release line.

New Features

Admin capabilities can be granted via LDAP/SAML attributes

The following environment variables are now available:

• LDAP: OVERLEAF_LDAP_IS_ADMIN_ATT and OVERLEAF_LDAP_IS_ADMIN_ATT_VALUE

• SAML: OVERLEAF_SAML_IS_ADMIN_FIELD and OVERLEAF_SAML_IS_ADMIN_FIELD_VALUE

When both environment variables are set, the login process updates user.isAdmin = true when the profile returned by the identity provided contains OVERLEAF_LDAP_IS_ADMIN_ATT/OVERLEAF_SAML_IS_ADMIN_FIELD, and its value is either:

• Equals to OVERLEAF_LDAP_IS_ADMIN_ATT_VALUE/OVERLEAF_SAML_IS_ADMIN_FIELD_VALUE

• An array containing OVERLEAF_LDAP_IS_ADMIN_ATT_VALUE/OVERLEAF_SAML_IS_ADMIN_FIELD_VALUE

Other new features

• Chat feature can be disabled with OVERLEAF_DISABLE_CHAT=true

• SAML Audience, which defaults to OVERLEAF_SAML_ISSUER can now be configured with OVERLEAF_SAML_AUDIENCE

Bug fixes

• Fixes anonymous users accessing a project via read-write link not being able to create labels in the history panel.

• Fixes some scenarios where users are unable to change the TeX Live version in the editor (Server Pro only)

• Admin: searching users by domain now display admins users.

Other changes

• Admin: a num_active_users metric with the count of active users is now available via /metrics.

• Admin: editor resources checks are no longer part of the Launchpad main screen.

• Many small improvements and bug fixes.

Server Pro 5.1.1

Release date: 2024-08-13

• Server Pro Image ID: cb82f2debf6f

• Community Edition Image ID: 28f666f253f8

• Git Bridge Image ID: 4cd4bea6fb01

Bug fixes

• Fixes TexLive version selection after a version of TexLive is removed from ALL_TEX_LIVE_DOCKER_IMAGES.

• Fix for invalid URLs returning 500 instead of 400.

• Fix SAML SSO when using POST request to the Identity Provider when CSP are enabled.

Other changes

• Removed Editor Resources check from launchpad, which has been broken for a while and wasn't providing any value.

• /metrics and /health_check now return 404.

• Security update to prevent remote image loading in Visual Editor.

Server Pro 5.1.0

Release date: 2024-07-17

• Server Pro Image ID: 7216db608356

• Community Edition Image ID: 41a77f59f69e

• Git Bridge Image ID: 4cd4bea6fb01

MongoDB upgrade to v6

MongoDB 5 is reaching end of life on October 2024. All customers should upgrade to MongoDB 6.0. Follow the link to the official documentation for instructions.

Toolkit users now need to split the MongoDB image between MONGO_IMAGE (with just the image name) and MONGO_VERSION in their config/overleaf.rc file.

Example:

# When using a custom image, MONGO_VERSION is required
MONGO_IMAGE=my.docker.hub/mongo
MONGO_VERSION=6.0-custom

Please ensure you have a consistent database backup before upgrading.

Redis AOF Persistence enabled by default

AOF (Append Only File) persistence is now the recommended configuration for Redis persistence.

Redis documentation in the Overleaf wiki.

Toolkit users have AOF persistence enabled by default for new installs. Existing users are recommended to follow the instructions on the official documentation to switch to AOF:

https://redis.io/docs/latest/operate/oss_and_stack/management/persistence/#how-i-can-switch-to-aof-if-im-currently-using-dumprdb-snapshots

Deprecation for docker-compose v1

docker-compose v1 has reached its End Of Life in July 2023 (https://docs.docker.com/compose/migrate/). Support for docker-compose v1 in the Overleaf Toolkit will be dropped with the release of Server Pro 5.2. We recommend upgrading to Docker Compose v2 before then.

New features

• SAML: multiple certificates are now supported. You can now set a list of comma-separated certificates in OVERLEAF_SAML_SIGNING_CERT and OVERLEAF_SAML_CERT

• CSP (Content Security Policy) is now enabled by default. It can be disabled adding OVERLEAF_CSP_ENABLED=false to config/variables.env.

Bug fixes

• Fixes a bug where projects created before enabling the templates feature couldn't be published as templates.

• Fixed spacing in project list footer.

• Fixed post-login redirection when login after clicking the "Log in" button in the header.

Other changes

• Removed support for running LaTeX compiles with Docker-In-Docker in Server Pro. Sandboxed compiles using "sibling" containers is not affected by this.

• TeX Live images, as used for Sandboxed Compiles, need to be pulled outside of Server Pro now. All customers have been granted read access to quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full.

  The Overleaf Toolkit is pulling all configured images as part of bin/up. You can disable the automatic pulling using SIBLING_CONTAINERS_PULL=false in your config/overleaf.rc file.

• Stricter and faster graceful shutdown procedure for the Server Pro container

• The environment variable SYNCTEX_BIN_HOST_PATH is no longer used by the application

• We are sunsetting window properties like window.project_id. If you need access to any of these, please reach out to support@overleaf.com to discuss options.

• Significant reduction in Docker image size for Server Pro and CE

• Security updates to the base image and installed dependencies.

• Minor improvements and bugfixes.

Server Pro 5.0.7

Release date: 2024-07-12

• Server Pro Image ID: a8c301474a4d

• Community Edition Image ID: 6f3e55a67fd5

• Git Bridge Image ID: 455a8c0559a4

This is a security release. We added stricter controls for accessing project invite details and locked down access to files via the LaTeX compilation service.

We strongly recommend turning on the Sandboxed Compiles feature in Server Pro.

Server Pro 5.0.6

Release date: 2024-06-20

• Server Pro Image ID: c9de60b06959

• Community Edition Image ID: 46bb44d4215d

• Git Bridge Image ID: 455a8c0559a4

This is a security release. We added stricter controls for creating projects from ZIP URLs.

Server Pro 5.0.5

Release date: 2024-06-11

• Server Pro Image ID: 60da5806f83e

• Community Edition Image ID: 46bb44d4215d

• Git Bridge Image ID: 455a8c0559a4

This is a security release. We added stricter controls to prevent arbitrary CSS loading in the project editor.

Server Pro 5.0.4

Release date: 2024-05-24

• Server Pro Image ID: b0db0405a7ce

• Community Edition Image ID: abcec6efbbf7

• Git Bridge Image ID: 455a8c0559a4

This release provides security updates, bug fixes, and performance enhancements, including:

• Stricter controls to prevent arbitrary JavaScript execution in the browser.

• Updated libraries to enhance security and performance.

Server Pro 5.0.3

Release date: 2024-04-24

• Server Pro Image ID: dc88a9ade14d

• Community Edition Image ID: b4712d596c75

• Git Bridge Image ID: 455a8c0559a4

This release builds up on 5.0.2 and includes the second revision of the recovery process for doc versions.

If you never ran Server Pro version 5.0.1 or Community Edition version 5.0.1, or you started a brand new instance with 5.0.1, you do not need to run this recovery process. Please see the Bugfixes section for Server Pro 5.0.2 below for details on the need for a recovery and follow the updated wiki page on the recovery process.

Server Pro 5.0.2 (Retracted)

Release date: 2024-04-22

• Server Pro Image ID: 06eed5680340

• Community Edition Image ID: 9f018f899ba5

• Git Bridge Image ID: 455a8c0559a4

Security release

Server Pro 5.0.2 is a security release for the application runtime.

The Node.js runtime has been upgraded to 18.20.2. Check their release notes (18.20.1, 18.20.2) for more information.

Bug fixes

• Fixes database migration that resulted in the loss of doc versions. These are used by the history system and their loss resulted in the history system skipping over updates effectively resulting in no further changes to the history view and git-integration. This release fixes the database migration and also sports a recovery process for instances that ran release 5.0.1. If you ran version 5.0.1, please take a look at the dedicated doc version recovery process.

• Fixes references and templates services on Docker 26 IPv6.

Other changes

• Adds bin/flush-history-queues and bin/force-history-resyncs utility scripts.

Server Pro 5.0.1 (Retracted)

Release date: 2024-04-02

• Server Pro Image ID: 0d28770b4692

• Community Edition Image ID: ee69bf0baddf

• Git Bridge Image ID: 455a8c0559a4

This major release includes the following changes:

• Required database upgrade from MongoDB 4 to MongoDB 5

• Rebranding of SHARELATEX_* to OVERLEAF_* environment variables

• Rebranding of filesystem paths from ShareLaTeX brand to Overleaf brand

Important: the Toolkit will help migrating your configuration, please follow the prompts of bin/upgrade.

MongoDB upgrade to v5

MongoDB 4.4 has reached end of life on February 2024. All customers should upgrade to MongoDB 5.0 before upgrading to the 5.0 release line.

The release also includes migrations that update the database in a backwards incompatible format.

Please ensure you have a consistent database backup before upgrading. In case of roll-back, you will need to restore the database backup. Server Pro 4.x is not capable of reading the new format, which can result in data-loss or broken projects.

Configuration changes

Environment variables have been rebranded from SHARELATEX_* to OVERLEAF_*. Overleaf Toolkit users should be prompted to perform the migration when running bin/upgrade, and warnings will be printed when trying to run the Overleaf instance with the incorrect configuration.

Filesystem paths have also been rebranded from ShareLaTeX brand to Overleaf brand:

• /var/lib/sharelatex -> /var/lib/overleaf

• /var/log/sharelatex -> /var/log/overleaf

• /etc/sharelatex -> /etc/overleaf

Filesystem changes are automatically handled by the Overleaf Toolkit. Otherwise, make sure bind-mount targets are updated to refer to the Overleaf equivalent, e.g.

docker-compose/yml before:

volumes:
    - /my/docker-host/path:/var/log/sharelatex

docker-compose.yml after:

volumes:
    - /my/docker-host/path:/var/log/overleaf

New features

• Added support for using IAM credentials when using AWS S3 for project/history files

• Server Pro will refuse to start when using an older version of MongoDB

Bug fixes

• Fixes a scenario in which the share project modal doesn't display the link-sharing links immediately after turning on the feature

Other changes

• All services are now using IPv4 in the container

• Container image upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 LTS

• Security updates to the base image and installed packages, along with improvements and bugfixes.

Before you install Overleaf, it's important to familiarize yourself with the requirements, installation process, configuration options, and upgrade sections of this documentation. It's also crucial to have a solid understanding of your organization's requirements for using Overleaf and the necessary underlying infrastructure needed for its successful operation.

What can I do to prepare?

Understand the requirements for running Overleaf. This involves evaluating your organization's existing server environment, network capabilities and storage resources. Ensure that your infrastructure meets or exceeds the specified requirements outlined in this documentation.

Before initiating the installation process, ensure you have administrative access to the server where you intend to deploy Overleaf. This may involve coordinating with your IT team or system administrators to obtain the necessary permissions and resources. Additionally, review any security considerations or network policies that might impact the installation.

What if I have a problem?

If you encounter any problems, we recommend first consulting the troubleshooting section of the documentation as it contains common issues and required information needed by the support team if you need to reach out for assistance.

By following these steps and thoroughly reading the documentation, you'll be well-prepared to install, configure, and maintain Overleaf according to your organization's requirements. Remember that a solid understanding of your infrastructure and the installation process is key to a successful deployment.

Make sure you read this section thoroughly before proceeding with any installation of Overleaf.

Requirements for installing Server Pro and Community Edition

Server Pro 1.2.1

(Community Edition Image ID: 8e1bae81acac)

Server Pro 1.2.0

• Use both 2016 and 2017 versions of texlive, for backward compatibility

Server Pro 1.1.0

• Update texlive to 2017.1

• Use https for the learn-wiki proxy by default

Server Pro 1.0.2

• New administration interface

• Package-aware Autocomplete

• Various bug fixes and performance improvements

Server Pro 1.0.0

• Upgraded all internal services to latest node-js runtime

• Per-User Track Changes

• Improved Autocomplete

• Improved Spellcheck

• Fixed an issue with creating templates

• Various bug-fixes and improvements

Operating systems

For the best experience when running Overleaf, we highly recommend using a Debian-based operating system, such as Ubuntu. This choice aligns with the software's development environment and is the preferred option among the majority of Overleaf users.

Dependencies

Both Server CE and Server Pro currently support the following versions of dependencies:

• Docker 23.0 (ends 19 May 2025), 25.0, 26.1 and 27.2+

• MongoDB 6.0

• Redis 6.2

MongoDB and Redis are automatically pulled by docker compose when running Server CE or Server Pro, unless configured to use a different installation.

The Toolkit depends on the following programs:

• bash

• Docker

docker compose is required and is generally installed with Docker.

We recommend that you install the most recent version of Docker that is available for your operating system.

Once Docker is installed correctly, you should be able to run these commands without error:

Updates to this page:

• (2024-04-22 13:40 BST): Added step "Stop new updates from getting into the system and flush all changes to MongoDB".

• (2024-04-23 11:45 BST): Account for broken flushes in 5.0.1 and skip flushes when 5.0.2 was started.

The duration of the recovery will depend on the number and size of projects in your instance and the storage backend used by the history store for chunks (as defined in OVERLEAF_HISTORY_CHUNKS_BUCKET).

The recovery process will delay the application start inside the Server Pro container. The site will appear offline during that time. We only support running the recovery from a single instance of the Server Pro container, all other horizontal scaling workers need to be offline.

You can stop and resume the recovery process if needed.

Based on our performance tests, the recovery process can process approximately 10k small projects per minute on modern hardware (3GHz CPU clock speed and local NVMe storage). As an example, for an instance with 100k projects, schedule a maintenance window that allows at least 10+2min of downtime. Use the following query to estimate the number of projects in your instance:

Please read the following recovery steps in full before you start. Server Pro customers are more than welcome to reach out to support@overleaf.com with any questions.

Recovery process

When provisioning hardware to run Overleaf, the main factor to consider is how many concurrent users will be running compiles.

For example, if you have a license for 100 total users, but only expect ~5 to be working at the same time, the minimal install will be sufficient. If you expect a higher proportion to be working (and compiling) simultaneously, you should consider provisioning a server with a higher specification.

Minimal install

A minimum base requirement of 2 cores and 3GB memory is required for basic operations with around 5 concurrent users. This minimum requirement will also be sufficient for larger groups where there is less concurrent usage, or where it is OK for compile times to be longer during heavier usage.

Scaling

As a rule of thumb, to provide a high and consistent level of service, 1 CPU core and 1GB of memory should be added to the minimal install for every 5-10 concurrent users.

This should only be taken as a guide, as factors such as the size of typical documents (larger documents use up more compile resources), how often users compile, and what tolerance there is for longer compile times during heavy usage, all affect the level of provisioning required.

Many of our customers look to deploy Server Pro organization wide, or across large teams. In those situations, it's difficult for us to advise on specific setup requirements, because the use cases and underlying hardware available can be quite varied.

Storage

We advise against using Network File System (NFS)/Amazon EFS/Amazon EBS for project/history storage in larger setups and explicitly do not support it for horizontal scaling.

The behavior of these file systems is not providing the necessary performance and reliability that Server Pro needs when running at a high scale. When the file system cannot keep up with the load, the application stalls from too many blocking IO operations. These stalls can lead to overrun Redis-based locks, which in turn can result in corrupted project data.

Nginx-specific configuration for large deployments

By default, Overleaf Server instance limit the number of connections to 768. This includes persistent Websocket connections, top-level HTML navigation and ajax requests. Once the limit is hit, the editor might not be able to connect, the editor page might not load entirely and compile requests can fail. Nginx will return status 500 responses and log worker_connections are not enough while connecting to upstream into var/log/nginx/error.log inside the sharelatex container.

Nginx doesn't do much work compared to other parts of the system, so these limits act as a safety preventing too many connections from overwhelming the system. It's preferable to drop some excess connections early rather than slowing down every connection.

Overleaf Server instances expose environment variables for adjusting these nginx settings:

CPU speed

LaTeX is a single threaded program, meaning it can only utilize one CPU core at a time. The CPU is also the main limitation when compiling a document. Therefore the faster the single core performance of your CPU the faster you will be able to compile a document. More cores will only help if you are trying to compile more documents than you have free CPU cores.

Release notes 0.6.x

Server Pro 0.6.3

• Fix bug in Sibling Containers feature

• Basic auto-complete for \ref{} commands

• Assorted bug fixes

Server Pro 0.6.2

• Fix bug with login redirect flow

• Enable Track Changes for all users

• Various bug fixes

• Protect user settings pages with "Sudo Mode", Users will be prompted for their password when accessing the settings page.

Server Pro 0.6.1

• Handle errors in History feature

Server Pro 0.6.0

• Various bug fixes

Release notes 0.5.x

Server Pro 0.5.11

• Various bugfixes

Server Pro 0.5.9

• Fixed an issue where logins were not being counted for LDAP users

• Internal improvements to page rendering

Server Pro 0.5.8

• New Launchpad page to help with first setup: (/launchpad)

• Fixed an issue with project invites and Saml

• Various bugfixes

Server Pro 0.5.4

Server Pro 0.5.3

• Fix a bug where the /register link in nav-bar was not being hidden when using an external auth source.

Server Pro 0.5.2

• Correct an issue with LDAP configuration, requiring upgrade to a new configuration format.

• Add an option to restrict project invites to existing user accounts

Server Pro 0.5.0

• New SAML integration option, link ShareLaTeX to SAML/Shibboleth/etc.

• Improved LDAP integration, no configuration changes required

0.5.0

• Code Check mode, shows tex errors in the editor

• Improved support for plain-text emails

• Show the current user email in the "Account" dropdown

• Improved project search

• Better cookie expiry behaviour

• Improved spell-check underline effect

• Old user accounts are automatically upgraded to modern feature set

Release notes 0.3.0

• All configuration of ShareLaTeX is now done via Environmental variables.

• Much better LaTeX error parsing, include errors in .bbl files

• Snappier feedback when changing image

• Tags/folders can be deleted and renamed via side menu

• Clone and zip uploads speed improvement

• User is warned about overwriting files

• Synctex is more acurate.

• Prevention against massive projects effecting system

• Multiple small bug fixes

Release notes 0.2.0

• Documents are now stored in their own collection, making projects thiner

• Word count

• lots of stability work including:

  • Better handling of poor connections over websockets

  • Seperation of web and api routes

Release notes 0.1.3 and 0.1.4

0.1.3 was mostly bug fixes. The notable thing for users running upgrading from old versions in 0.1.4 is user management, and the addition and removal of some settings parameters:

User Management

Public registration is now removed in the open source version. It is a significant security risk to allow public access to a LaTeX installation on your server, and most users have request some for of private user management. See [[Creating and managing users]] for an overview of how it now works.

Added settings

• appName - This should be set to the name of your ShareLaTeX install. E.g. "Acme Inc's ShareLaTeX Server".

• adminEmail - The contact email address of whoever is responsible for running the server.

Deprecated settings

• websocketsUrl - This was the source of most problems with 0.1.2 and 0.1.3 so has been removed. The web service now proxies to the real-time service so the client does not need to know where to find it.

Release notes 0.1.2

Installing the real-time service

First make sure you actually have the real-time service installed:

websocketsUrl

You should add a new line to your config file to include the new websocketsUrl parameter:

This should be the same as your siteUrl.

Reverse proxy settings

In development the editor connects to the real-time service at http://localhost:3026, a separate end point from the web service, hence the need for a configurable parameter. In production you likely have a reverse proxy set up, and need to forward any requests to /socket.io onto the real-time service rather than the web service.

See the [[Nginx as a Reverse Proxy]] page for an Nginx example, particularly the location /socket.io block.

In this section we will guide you through downloading the Toolkit from GitHub, familiarizing yourself with some of the Toolkit's commands and configuring some basic settings. By the end of this page you should have a running on-premises instance over Overleaf.

Services

The Server Pro infrastructure comprises four primary services: sharelatex, git-bridge (optional), mongo and redis. The sharelatex service, which runs the main Server Pro application, depends on the mongo and redis services for its database and caching/real-time functionalities and the git-bridge to handle the Git integration (optional). The only port published on the host machine is port 80, which is by the sharelatex container.

Server Pro also optionally supports S3 compatible storage for project files and full project history as well as being able to proxy access to the main Overleaf documentation site. For more information, see our guide on Adding LaTeX user help pages.

Compiling

For Sandboxed Compiles, the sharelatex container will orchestrate the creation of new containers to handle project compiles, it does this via the Docker socket on the host machine. You can read more about the editor and end-to-end compile/caching process here.

Networking

Communication between containers is facilitated through Docker's internal DNS resolution via a dedicated bridge network, and no firewalls are enabled. By default, the above services use their respective standard ports but are configurable by environment variables. The sharelatex container uses port 80 for external web access (served by Nginx), the mongo container uses port 27017 and redis uses port 6379.

For customers using our managed solution Overleaf Toolkit, you can optionally enable a TLS proxy for terminating HTTPS connections using Nginx via an environment variable. Alternatively, you can use your existing TLS proxy.

Summary

• Outside the Docker network, only port 80 is accessible and bound to Nginx. Note: The sharelatex container runs many services that communicate with each other via HTTP. However, these ports are not accessible from outside the Docker network.

• Inside the Docker network, Overleaf services, MongoDB, Redis and Git Bridge can talk to each other freely.

• Inside Sandboxed Compiles containers, no network is available.

The Overleaf Toolkit is the recommended deployment method for on-premises installations of the Community Edition and Server Pro and has been designed to work with the most common environment: a single physical server or virtual machine. The Toolkit uses docker compose to manage your server's Docker containers and provides a set of scripts which wrap docker commands to assist with the more technical side of managing an on-premises version of Overleaf.

The bin/docker-compose wrapper

The bin/docker-compose script is a wrapper around docker compose. It loads configuration from the config/ directory, before invoking docker compose with whatever arguments were passed to the script.

You can treat bin/docker-compose as a transparent wrapper for the docker compose program installed on your machine.

For example, we can check which containers are running with the following:

$ bin/docker-compose ps

Convenience helpers

In addition to bin/docker-compose, the Toolkit also provides a collection of convenient scripts to assist with common tasks:

• bin/up: shortcut for bin/docker-compose up

• bin/start: shortcut for bin/docker-compose start

• bin/stop: shortcut for bin/docker-compose stop

• bin/shell: starts a shell inside the sharelatex container

• bin/doctor: script used to gather installation and deployment information. See Checking your server section below

• bin/mongo: starts a shell inside the mongo container and switch to the correct database (sharelatex)

• bin/backup-config: used to create a copy, zip or tar of your current configuration and then store in a destination directory of your choice

• bin/logs: script used for easily viewing/tailing service logs

• bin/error-logs: script used for easily viewing/tailing service error logs

• bin/rename-env-vars-5-0: migration script used to update environment variables in config/variables.env as part of the re-branding from ShareLaTeX to Overleaf

• bin/rename-rc-vars: migration script used to update environment variables in config/overleaf.rc as part of the re-branding from ShareLaTeX to Overleaf

• bin/run-script: helper script used to simplify running scripts that are stored within the sharelatex container

• bin/upgrade: script used to assist with instance upgrades. The script with check for updates to the Toolkit code (via git) and offer to pull any new changes. It will then check for the latest available version of the Docker image currently in use and offer to update it. The script provides step-by-step confirmation, the option to take a backup of current configuration and handles the stopping/starting of Docker services. See Upgrading your deployment for more information.

Checking your server

The Overleaf Toolkit includes a handy script called bin/doctor that produces a report pointing to any unfulfilled dependency.

Before we continue any further, let's run the bin/doctor script and check that everything is working correctly.

bin/doctor

We should see some output similar to this:

====== Overleaf Doctor ======
- Host Information
    - Linux
    - Output of 'lsb_release -a':
            No LSB modules are available.
            Distributor ID:     Ubuntu
            Description:        Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
            Release:    22.04
            Codename:   jammy
- Dependencies
    - bash
        - status: present
        - version info: 5.1.16(1)-release
    - docker
        - status: present
        - version info: Docker version 27.3.1, build ce12230
    - realpath
        - status: present
        - version info: realpath (GNU coreutils) 8.32
    - perl
        - status: present
        - version info: 5.034000
    - awk
        - status: present
        - version info: GNU Awk 5.1.0, API: 3.0 (GNU MPFR 4.1.0, GNU MP 6.2.1)
    - openssl
        - status: present
        - version info: OpenSSL 3.0.2 15 Mar 2022 (Library: OpenSSL 3.0.2 15 Mar 2022)
    - docker compose
        - status: present
        - version info: Docker Compose version v2.29.7
- Docker Daemon
    - status: up
====== Configuration ======
- config/version
    - status: present
    - version: 5.1.1
- config/overleaf.rc
    - status: present
    - values
        - OVERLEAF_DATA_PATH: data/overleaf
        - OVERLEAF_LOG_PATH: data/overleaf/logs
        - SERVER_PRO: true
            - logged in to quay.io: true
        - SIBLING_CONTAINERS_ENABLED: true
        - OVERLEAF_LISTEN_IP: 0.0.0.0
        - OVERLEAF_PORT: 80
        - MONGO_ENABLED: true
        - MONGO_IMAGE: mongo
        - MONGO_VERSION: 6.0
        - MONGO_DATA_PATH: data/mongo
        - REDIS_ENABLED: true
        - REDIS_IMAGE: redis:6.2
        - REDIS_DATA_PATH: data/redis
- config/variables.env
    - status: present
    - values
        - OVERLEAF_FILESTORE_BACKEND: fs
        - OVERLEAF_HISTORY_BACKEND: fs
====== Warnings ======
- None, all good
====== End ======

First, we see some information about the host system (the machine that the Toolkit is being run on), then some information about dependencies. If any dependencies are missing, we will see a warning here. Next, the doctor checks our local configuration. At the end, the doctor will print out some warnings, if any problems were encountered. For example, if you're running end-of-life versions of Docker or Docker Compose.

If you run into problems with running the Toolkit, you should first run the bin/doctor script and check it's output for any warnings.

The recommended way to deploy and manage Overleaf Server CE and Server Pro instances is via the use of the Toolkit.

The Toolkit simplifies the creation of your Overleaf instance through the use of some custom scripts that abstract away the orchestration of required microservices. Simply run the bundled initialization script, provide a few configuration options like your persistent storage paths, and the Toolkit will take care of provisioning and connecting the microservices that make up your Overleaf Server CE or Server Pro instance.

This leaves you free to focus on customizing the user experience and implementing the specific features that make up your on-premise instance. The Toolkit handles all the complexity behind the scenes, enabling a simplified deployment of your Overleaf instance.

Architecture

Inside the Overleaf container, the software runs as a set of microservices, managed by runit. Some of the more interesting files inside the container are:

• /etc/service/: initialization files for the microservices.

• /var/log/overleaf/: logs for each microservice.

• /overleaf/services/: code for the various microservices.

• /var/lib/overleaf/: the mount-point for persistent data (corresponds to the directory indicated by OVERLEAF_DATA_PATH on the host).

The MongoDB and Redis Containers

Overleaf depends on two external databases: MongoDB and Redis. By default, the Toolkit will provision a container for each of these databases, in addition to the Overleaf container, for a total of three Docker containers.

Editor and compile process

In this section we'll provide a broad overview for the handling of documents and the compile process.

Components/Actors:

Redis caching

• user: loads editor page

• editor: opens web socket

• editor: sends request to open a document via web socket

  • real-time -> document-updater: document is loaded from MongoDB into Redis

• editor: sends document update via web socket

  • real-time -> document-updater: document is updated in Redis

• editor: sends more compile requests

  • After 5 minutes have passed since last flush (per doc):

    • document-updater: flush doc from Redis to MongoDB

• editor: sends more updates

  • every 100 updates (per doc):

    • document-updater: flush doc history from Redis to MongoDB

• user: leaves the editor/closes browser tab

  • 5 minutes later

    • real-time: checks for other collaborators, if there are none:

      • real-time -> document-updater: flushes docs from Redis to MongoDB

Reading from MongoDB into Redis

• document-updater -> web -> docstore: read from MongoDB

Flushing from Redis into MongoDB

• document-updater -> web -> docstore: write into MongoDB

Compile - "full" sync-mode

• editor: sends compile request with sync-mode set to "full" compile

• web -> document-updater: any documents are flushed from redis into MongoDB

• web -> docstore: all documents are downloaded from MongoDB

• web -> clsi: compile request is sent to clsi, including:

  • the sync-mode

  • a hash of the file tree -> the "project state"

  • all docs with their content -> subject to 7MB request body limit

  • binary file URLs for separate downloading

• clsi: check on-disk state with sync-mode and "project state"

  • this is a full sync, so we can ignore what was previously written

• clsi: cleanup compile dir

• clsi: write all docs into compile dir

• clsi: write all binary files into compile dir

  • clsi copies the files from a per project local cache

  • on cache miss:

    • clsi->filestore: download files

• clsi: write the "project state"

• clsi: ensure docker container exists with desired config

  • build container options, includes texlive version

  • hash options

  • container name: project-<project-id>-<user-id>-<hash>

• clsi: start container and stream stdout/stderr into memory -> limit 2MB

• clsi: leave stopped container behind -> cleaned up after 24h

• clsi: write stdout/stderr to disk

• clsi: copy output files into unique output directory

  • build-id composed of 8 random bytes plus timestamp in ms precision

  • delete all but last 3 (anonymous)/ 1 (logged in user) build folders

• clsi: compile was failure/timeout

  • delete compile cache - it may have partial files/corrupted cache

• editor: downloads output.log and output.pdf

Compile - "incremental" sync-mode

• editor: sends compile request with sync-mode set to "incremental" compile

• web -> document-updater: get any documents from redis

  • the "project state" hash is also stored in redis

  • web sends the hash of the file tree to document-updater and document-updater can turn the incremental compile into a full compile on mismatch

    • see compile process as performed when 'editor requested "full" compile'

• web -> clsi: compile request is sent to clsi, including:

  • the sync-mode

  • a hash of the file tree -> the "project state"

  • all docs from redis with their content -> subject to 7MB request body limit

  • no binary fines

• clsi: check on-disk state with sync-mode and "project state"

  • this is an incremental sync, so the "project state" must match

  • on mismatch: respond with 409, let web retry with "full" sync

    • see compile process as performed when 'editor requested "full" compile'

• clsi: write updated docs into compile dir

• clsi: ensure docker container exists with desired config

  • build container options, includes texlive version

  • hash options

  • container name: project-<project-id>-<user-id>-<hash>

• clsi: start container and stream stdout/stderr into memory -> limit 2MB

• clsi: leave stopped container behind -> cleaned up after 24h

• clsi: write stdout/stderr to disk

• clsi: copy output files into unique output directory

  • build-id composed of 8 random bytes plus timestamp in ms precision

  • delete all but last 3 (anonymous)/ 1 (logged in user) build folders

• clsi: compile was failure/timeout

  • delete compile cache - it may have partial files/corrupted cache

• editor: downloads output.log and output.pdf

Compile - switching between modes

• editor: observes a compile failure, next compile is a "full" compile

• editor: observes a compile success, next compile is an "incremental" compile

Whether you're a researcher interested in running the Community Editition in your trusted workgroup or an enterprise organisation wanting to integrate Server Pro into your existing infrastructure, to get started, we always highly recommend setting up your new instance using our Toolkit with the default Community Edition image as doing so is a great way to familiarize yourselves with the platform's requirements and helps ensure a smooth when deciding to upgrade to Server Pro.

Like the Community Edition, Server Pro comes as a Docker container and is a direct drop in replacement and additionally includes features such as SSO provided via LDAP and SAML2, improved security, tracked changes, comments, our optimized version of TeX Live, templates and administration panel.

Once you've depolyed the Community Edition using the Toolkit and familiarized yourself with the application, you can easily switch to Server Pro by following the instructions here.

Downloading the Toolkit

The Toolkit is compatible with both the Server CE and Server Pro and is the recommend installation method. Using the Toolkit will allow you to easily get started with Server CE and seamlessly upgrade to Server Pro if required.

To install the Toolkit you'll need to navigate to the intended installation path and then clone the Overleaf Toolkit GitHub repository using this command:

git clone https://github.com/overleaf/toolkit.git ./overleaf-toolkit

Wait for the cloning process to complete then let's switch into the newly created overleaf-toolkit directory:

cd ./overleaf-toolkit

If you're a Server Pro customer please continue with the next steps to log into our image repository and change the Toolkit configuration to use the Server Pro image. If not, you can skip this section and move on to the personalizing your instance step.

Obtaining Server Pro Image

You will have been supplied with a set of credentials when you signed up for a Server Pro license.

Switching to Server Pro

If you're deploying an on-premises version of Overleaf for the first time we highly recommend first setting up the Overleaf Toolkit with the Community Edition before switching to Server Pro as this will help you get familiarized with the process.

As Server Pro can be used as a drop-in replacement for the Community Edition you'll be able to use all your existing settings and customizations. When you're ready, Toolkit deployments can enable Server Pro by editing the config/overleaf.rc file and changing the SERVER_PRO environment variable to true.

The next time you run bin/up, the Toolkit will automatically download and use the Server Pro image.

If you're upgrading from the Community Edition to Server Pro you can do that now. If not, please move onto the next step in the deployment guide to personalize your instance.

Taking a look around

Now that we have a local copy of the Toolkit, let's take a look at the structure of the repository using the ls command:

If everything was cloned successfully you should see something like this:

Personalizing your instance

Before we start your Overleaf instance for the first time we're going to update the config/variables.env configuration file with your custom information.

Open the config/variables.env file using your favourite text editor and update each of the following environment variables with the required information.

Once you have updated these environment variables, save and quit - you're now ready to start your instance for the first time.

To start your instance run the following command:

This command will download all the required images, create the containers (using your customizations) and start up the instance. You should see some log output from the various Docker containers. You can start them up again (without attaching to the log output) by running bin/start.

That's it for the initial part of installation. You can now move onto the Post installation tasks where you'll create your first administrator account and First example project.

Initializing the configuration

Let's initialize our new server's configuration files with some sensible defaults by running the bundle bin/init script.

This script will not overwrite any existing configuration files.

Now let's check the contents of the config/ directory using the ls command:

If everything was successfully initialized you should see three configuration files overleaf.rc, variables.env and version. These are the main server configuration files and allow you to customize how your server operates and how your users interact with your instance.

Overleaf Community Edition and Server Pro have both been architected to work offline, which means that it may not always be possible to reach the quay.io registry to pull the required sharelatex , sharelatex-pro and TeX Live images. This is not a problem as Docker provides tooling for exporting and importing images that will help you with an offline/air-gapped deployment.

At a high level, you'll download the required images on a device with internet connectivity, export them to a portable device (or transfer them using SCP/Rsync), and import them on the air-gapped server.

To do this, you'll need to complete the following steps:

• Pull all the required images (sharelatex, sharelatex-pro, git-bridge, mongo, redis + any required TeX Live images for use with Sandboxed Compiles) on a machine with internet connectivity

  • docker pull quay.io/sharelatex/sharelatex-pro:5.1.1

  • docker pull quay.io/sharelatex/git-bridge:5.1.1 (tag must be the same as sharelatex-pro)

  • docker pull mongo:6

  • docker pull redis:6.2

  • docker pull quay.io/sharelatex/texlive-full:2024.1

• For each of the pulled images, you'll need to then export them to a .tar file. For example, docker save quay.io/sharelatex/sharelatex-pro:5.1.1 > sharelatex-pro:5.1.1.tar

• Using your preferred method, transfer the .tar files from your internet-connected machine to the offline/air-gapped server

• For each of the .tar files, use the docker load command to load the image from the .tar file. For example, docker load < sharelatex-pro:5.1.1.tar

• Finally, run the docker images command to view/confirm the loading of images was successful and that they are available