Three critical settings that prevent data loss when self-hosting AnythingLLM

Self-hosting AnythingLLM via Docker is straightforward, but redeployments silently wipe all workspaces, embeddings, and user data if three key settings are misconfigured. The first involves correctly setting the STORAGE_DIR environment variable and ensuring a persistent volume is actually mounted at that path, since an unmounted path causes irreversible data loss without any warning. The second is a file permissions issue, where a fresh volume mounted to a non-root container user will block writes and trigger misleading SQLite errors, requiring either root access or a pre-boot ownership change. Third, platforms like Railway and Heroku dynamically assign ports via a $PORT variable, but AnythingLLM defaults to port 3001, causing 502 errors unless PORT is explicitly pinned to 3001. The author, who maintains a Railway deployment template for AnythingLLM, notes these fixes apply regardless of whether the app is run on Docker, Fly, Render, Coolify, or similar platforms.