Perimattic Managed Linkwarden - Bookmark Archive on AWS

This AMI runs Linkwarden, the open-source collaborative bookmark manager that also archives the pages you save, with PostgreSQL 17 on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The official Linkwarden image is pinned to 2.16.3, with PostgreSQL 17.11, and baked into the AMI, so first start does not depend on a registry. Built on the open-source Linkwarden (AGPL-3.0). Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Linkwarden project; product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Why Linkwarden?

Linkwarden collects links into collections with tags, notes and highlights, and keeps a copy of each saved page (a screenshot, a PDF, a readable copy and a single-file copy) so it stays available if the original disappears. Collections can be shared with other people, and there is a REST API and a browser extension.

What Perimattic adds

No open sign-up: a fresh Linkwarden lets any visitor create an account. During first-login setup this AMI starts Linkwarden once on the loopback interface only, creates your administrator through Linkwarden's own sign-up API with a random 24-character password generated on your server, and then restarts it with registration closed, all before the site is published. Setup checks that the password works, that a wrong password and a stranger are refused, that registration is closed and that anonymous requests to the API are refused. The session secret is generated on your server too. There are no default or shared credentials in the image.

PostgreSQL: bookmarks are stored in PostgreSQL. The database is reachable only inside the Docker network.

HTTPS: Apache is configured as a reverse proxy and a free Let's Encrypt certificate is requested for your domain with certbot. Linkwarden listens only on the loopback interface.

Privacy: Linkwarden's favicon lookup, which would send the domain of every saved link to Google's and DuckDuckGo's icon services, is blocked in Apache, so the interface shows its generic link icon.

Patched base: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS built through an automated EC2 Image Builder pipeline, with security updates applied at build time.

What you should know

Saving a link makes this server fetch that page and render it with a headless Chromium browser inside the image, which needs outbound internet access and memory: Linkwarden used about 0.45 to 0.55 GB when idle and up to about 0.67 GB while archiving a page in our tests, so a t3.medium (4 GB) is the recommended starting size. Fetching addresses on private networks, including the instance metadata service, is refused. Search covers names, URLs, descriptions and tags; searching inside the saved page text needs Meilisearch, which is not included. No mail server is configured, so there are no password-reset emails; the administrator adds other people under the settings.

Licence

Linkwarden is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0); this AMI runs the unmodified upstream image, whose source is at github.com/linkwarden/linkwarden. PostgreSQL is released under the PostgreSQL License.

Getting Started Launch the AMI and open ports 22, 80 and 443 in the security group SSH in and answer the setup prompts (domain and admin email) Open https://your-domain  and sign in as admin with the password printed at the end of setup Create a collection and save your first link

A domain name with an A record pointing at the instance is required, because the site is served over HTTPS.

This AMI is built and supported by Perimattic.

Book a free setup consultation at https://cal.com/gaurav-pareek-perimattic/marketplace-setup-consultations  or email us at aws-support@perimattic.com .

Support Managed and supported by Perimattic, a cloud infrastructure company with 13+ years of experience serving global clients. We offer free setup assistance, custom integrations, infrastructure consulting, and 24/7 support.