Installation

Anvil ships as a Docker Compose stack with three services: the FastAPI backend (api), the React web frontend (web), and the privileged runner (runner). Postgres (db) is the fourth container.

Prerequisites

• Linux host with Docker 24+ and Docker Compose v2
• sudo privilege for the runner container (it needs --privileged
• pid=host + host namespace access to run fio, nvme, and lspci against real devices)
• A raw, unmounted NVMe block device you're willing to have Anvil write to

Clone and start

```bash git clone https://github.com/helixzz/anvil cd anvil cp .env.example .env

Edit .env — at minimum set ANVIL_BEARER_TOKEN to a random string of 32+ chars

sudo docker compose up -d ```

Anvil will be reachable at http://localhost:8081 (web) and http://localhost:8080 (API).

Environment variables

The .env file controls configuration:

Variable	Default	Description
ANVIL_BEARER_TOKEN	(required)	Admin bearer token; also the bootstrap admin password (first 16 chars)
ANVIL_DATABASE_URL	postgresql+asyncpg://anvil:anvil@db:5432/anvil	Postgres async DSN
ANVIL_RUNNER_SOCKET	/run/anvil/runner.sock	Unix socket for runner RPC
ANVIL_CORS_ORIGINS	[]	JSON array of allowed origins; empty disables CORS entirely
ANVIL_LOG_LEVEL	info	Log level
ANVIL_SIMULATION_MODE	false	Stub runner responses for UI development

First admin login

Anvil bootstraps a default admin user on first boot:

• Username: admin
• Password: first 16 characters of ANVIL_BEARER_TOKEN

Rotate this password immediately from the Admin → Users page.

The legacy bearer token remains valid as an admin credential for automation.

Production notes

• Anvil assumes a trusted LAN. HTTPS is not a built-in concern; terminate TLS at an upstream reverse proxy if you need it.
• The runner container must be the only host process writing to the device under test. Anvil rejects runs against mounted filesystems and against devices without an empty partition table.
• Postgres is plain 16-alpine; back it up like any other database.