You need to mount a directory containing your kickstart file and then set the FUSIONAUTH_KICKSTART environment variable.
Create a local directory, which will eventually get mounted in the container (./kickstart) Put the kickstart config in there Tell docker-compose to mount that as a volume in the container. Now the kickstart config will be in the container. In the volumes: section of the fusionauth service, add - ./kickstart:/usr/local/fusionauth/kickstart Modify .env and add the kickstart config variable line: FUSIONAUTH_KICKSTART=/usr/local/fusionauth/kickstart/fa-kickstart.json Tell docker-compose to pass that into the container as an env var. In the environment section of the fusionauth service, add FUSIONAUTH_KICKSTART: ${FUSIONAUTH_KICKSTART}Here's a sample docker compose which uses the kickstart.json file in the current directory:
version: '3' services: db: image: postgres:9.6 environment: PGDATA: /var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata POSTGRES_USER: ${POSTGRES_USER} POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD} # Un-comment to access the db service directly # ports: # - 5432:5432 networks: - db restart: unless-stopped volumes: - db_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data fusionauth: image: fusionauth/fusionauth-app:latest depends_on: - db environment: DATABASE_URL: jdbc:postgresql://db:5432/fusionauth DATABASE_ROOT_USER: ${POSTGRES_USER} DATABASE_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD} DATABASE_USER: ${DATABASE_USER} DATABASE_PASSWORD: ${DATABASE_PASSWORD} FUSIONAUTH_MEMORY: ${FUSIONAUTH_MEMORY} FUSIONAUTH_SEARCH_ENGINE_TYPE: database FUSIONAUTH_URL: http://fusionauth:9011 FUSIONAUTH_RUNTIME_MODE: development FUSIONAUTH_KICKSTART: ${FUSIONAUTH_KICKSTART} networks: - db restart: unless-stopped ports: - 9011:9011 volumes: - fa_config:/usr/local/fusionauth/config - ./kickstart:/usr/local/fusionauth/kickstart networks: db: driver: bridge volumes: db_data: fa_config: