mediamtx

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for mediamtx

mediamtx (formerly rtsp-simple-server): a ready-to-use real-time media server and proxy that supports SRT, WebRTC, RTSP, RTMP, and LL-HLS.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/mediamtx:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Variants

Mirroring upstream's tag scheme, both variants publish to the same OCI repo — the ffmpeg-bundled flavor is distinguished by an -ffmpeg tag suffix.

Usage

The image's entrypoint runs mediamtx directly. Publish the ports for the protocols you intend to use and (optionally) the control API:

docker run --rm \
  -p 8554:8554 \
  -p 1935:1935 \
  -p 8888:8888 \
  -p 8889:8889 \
  -p 8890:8890/udp \
  -p 9997:9997 \
  -e MTX_API=yes \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/mediamtx:latest

Default listener ports: 8554 (RTSP), 1935 (RTMP), 8888 (HLS), 8889 (WebRTC/HTTP), 8890/udp (SRT), 9997 (control API).

Configuration

mediamtx reads /mediamtx.yml on startup and lets every field be overridden via environment variables (prefixed with MTX_). See the upstream reference configuration for the full surface, including authentication, path definitions, and per-protocol tuning.

List-of-struct fields (such as authInternalUsers) are set with indexed env vars rather than JSON, e.g.:

-e MTX_AUTHINTERNALUSERS_0_USER=admin
-e MTX_AUTHINTERNALUSERS_0_PASS=hunter2
-e MTX_AUTHINTERNALUSERS_0_PERMISSIONS_0_ACTION=api

Working directory and relative paths

This image runs as a non-root user with its working directory set to /var/lib/mediamtx, so the MoQ (Media over QUIC) server can auto-generate its TLS keypair (moqServerKey: auto.key / moqServerCert: auto.crt) at startup, which upstream writes to the current folder. Because mediamtx resolves relative config paths against the working directory, any relative value resolves under /var/lib/mediamtx rather than /. This notably affects recordPath (default ./recordings/...) and the per-protocol *ServerKey / *ServerCert fields (default server.key / server.crt). For recordings and TLS certificates, set absolute paths and mount a writable volume there.

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.