Setting Up Vaultwarden on CachyOS

The Goal

Self-hosted password management. Bitwarden is solid, but running the official server is heavy. Vaultwarden (the open-source lightweight fork) runs fine on a single machine with Docker.

The Setup

Server side:

  • Docker & Docker Compose (via pacman on Arch)
  • Vaultwarden container (includes self-signed SSL cert)
  • PostgreSQL for the database (or SQLite for simpler setup)
  • Persistent storage volume for vault data

Client side:

  • Bitwarden browser extension (Firefox or Chrome)
  • Point it at https://localhost (self-signed cert, so you’ll need to accept the warning)

No external reverse proxy or domain management—just local containers talking to each other over HTTPS.

What’s Next

Install Docker, spin up the containers with docker-compose, configure the extension, set a master password. Full credentials now stored and encrypted locally.

Status: In progress

By r3r4um r3r4um-code