I have tried the docker, ansible, and scratch methods. I have been troubleshooting for a month now. I have gotten nowhere. I need someone to help walk me through how to deploy a lemmy server because the guides are absolute trash.

Please help. I’m wasting money running this VPS and for literally nothing.

Edit: So, I’ve tried the ansible method, but I can’t access my server this way. It just keeps saying “UNREACHABLE”. I have generated a dozen keys, none of them work. I have NO PROBLEMS with ssh in Putty. I can use Putty all day. Putty works fine using my ssh key. Ansible does not. No amount of new keys has made any difference. I have countless keys in my stupid droplet because of this hacky garbage.

  • BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com
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    1 year ago

    So, here’s something that might work. I tested it on my local machine, up to Caddy but without HTTPS, but I’m confident it’ll work once deployed on a server.

    Prerequisites:

    • Server with Docker and docker-compose installed
    • Ports 80 and 443 open and directed at your server
    • A domain name pointing to your server

    Setup

    First, create a folder and download the following files:

    Then, generate passwords for PostgreSQL and your admin user, store them somewhere safe.

    Config changes

    lemmy.hjson

    You’ll want to change the admin_username, admin_password and site_name to match your primary user’s credentials and the name you want to give your instance.

    Then, change hostname to match your domain name: if it is sub.domain.tld then it should read hostname: "sub.domain.tld".

    The base config file does not have proper configuration for the database, so you’ll have to edit the database field as follows with the password you previously created:

      database: {
        host: postgres
        database: "lemmy"
        user: "lemmy"
        password: "POSTGRES_PWD" # Change for your password
      }
    

    Additionally, if you want to send emails for registration confirmation and password resets, add the following before the closing } and change to match your email provider configuration.

      email: {
          # Hostname and port of the smtp server
          smtp_server: "SMTP_SERVER"
          # Login name for smtp server
          smtp_login: "SMTP_LOGIN"
          # Password to login to the smtp server
          smtp_password: "SMTP_PASSWORD"
          # Address to send emails from, eg "noreply@your-instance.com"
          smtp_from_address: "SMTP_LOGIN"
          # Whether or not smtp connections should use tls. Can be none, tls, or starttls
          tls_type: "starttls"
        }
    

    docker-compose.yml

    By default the compose file is meant to build a development version of Lemmy, we will change this by removing the blocks with build and uncomment those with image. Note: think to update the images to 0.18.2 since it fixes some vulnerabilities.

    Also, since we will use a reverse proxy and I don’t now if your server has a firewall, we should remove the ports blocks which are used to expose the services’ ports on the host.

    Finally, make sure to change the POSTGRES_PASSWORD field to match the PostgreSQL password you set in lemmy.hjson.

    It should look something like that:

    version: "3.7"
    
    x-logging: &default-logging
      driver: "json-file"
      options:
        max-size: "50m"
        max-file: "4"
    
    services:
      proxy:
        image: nginx:1-alpine
        volumes:
          - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro,Z
        restart: always
        depends_on:
          - pictrs
          - lemmy-ui
        logging: *default-logging
    
      lemmy:
        # use "image" to pull down an already compiled lemmy. make sure to comment out "build".
        image: dessalines/lemmy:0.18.2
        # platform: linux/x86_64 # no arm64 support. uncomment platform if using m1.
        # use "build" to build your local lemmy server image for development. make sure to comment out "image".
        # run: docker compose up --build
    
        # this hostname is used in nginx reverse proxy and also for lemmy ui to connect to the backend, do not change
        hostname: lemmy
        restart: always
        environment:
          - RUST_LOG="warn,lemmy_server=debug,lemmy_api=debug,lemmy_api_common=debug,lemmy_api_crud=debug,lemmy_apub=debug,lemmy_db_schema=debug,lemmy_db_views=debug,lemmy_db_views_actor=debug,lemmy_db_views_moderator=debug,lemmy_routes=debug,lemmy_utils=debug,lemmy_websocket=debug"
          - RUST_BACKTRACE=full
        volumes:
          - ./lemmy.hjson:/config/config.hjson:Z
        depends_on:
          - postgres
          - pictrs
        logging: *default-logging
    
      lemmy-ui:
        # use "image" to pull down an already compiled lemmy-ui. make sure to comment out "build".
        image: dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.18.2
        # platform: linux/x86_64 # no arm64 support. uncomment platform if using m1.
        # use "build" to build your local lemmy ui image for development. make sure to comment out "image".
        # run: docker compose up --build
    
        # build:
        #   context: ../../lemmy-ui # assuming lemmy-ui is cloned besides lemmy directory
        #   dockerfile: dev.dockerfile
        environment:
          # this needs to match the hostname defined in the lemmy service
          - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST=lemmy:8536
          # set the outside hostname here
          - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST=localhost:1236
          - LEMMY_UI_HTTPS=false
          - LEMMY_UI_DEBUG=true
        depends_on:
          - lemmy
        restart: always
        logging: *default-logging
        init: true
    
      pictrs:
        image: asonix/pictrs:0.4.0-beta.19
        # this needs to match the pictrs url in lemmy.hjson
        hostname: pictrs
        # we can set options to pictrs like this, here we set max. image size and forced format for conversion
        # entrypoint: /sbin/tini -- /usr/local/bin/pict-rs -p /mnt -m 4 --image-format webp
        environment:
          - PICTRS_OPENTELEMETRY_URL=http://otel:4137
          - PICTRS__API_KEY=API_KEY
          - RUST_LOG=debug
          - RUST_BACKTRACE=full
          - PICTRS__MEDIA__VIDEO_CODEC=vp9
          - PICTRS__MEDIA__GIF__MAX_WIDTH=256
          - PICTRS__MEDIA__GIF__MAX_HEIGHT=256
          - PICTRS__MEDIA__GIF__MAX_AREA=65536
          - PICTRS__MEDIA__GIF__MAX_FRAME_COUNT=400
        user: 991:991
        volumes:
          - ./volumes/pictrs:/mnt:Z
        restart: always
        logging: *default-logging
    
      postgres:
        image: postgres:15-alpine
        # this needs to match the database host in lemmy.hson
        # Tune your settings via
        # https://pgtune.leopard.in.ua/#/
        # You can use this technique to add them here
        # https://stackoverflow.com/a/30850095/1655478
        hostname: postgres
        command:
          [
            "postgres",
            "-c",
            "session_preload_libraries=auto_explain",
            "-c",
            "auto_explain.log_min_duration=5ms",
            "-c",
            "auto_explain.log_analyze=true",
            "-c",
            "track_activity_query_size=1048576",
          ]
        environment:
          - POSTGRES_USER=lemmy
          - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password # Change with your password
          - POSTGRES_DB=lemmy
        volumes:
          - ./volumes/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data:Z
        restart: always
        logging: *default-logging
    

    Caddy

    For the final touch, we are going to setup Caddy, a reverse proxy with HTTPS support out of the box.

    First, create a file nammed Caddyfile and write the following in it:

    sub.domain.tld {
    	reverse_proxy http://proxy:1236
    }
    

    Make sure to match your actual domain name.

    Finally, update the docker-compose.yml file to add the following at the end (make sure that it’s correctly tabulated)

      caddy:
        image: caddy:2.6.4
        restart: unless-stopped
        ports:
          - "80:80"
          - "443:443"
          - "443:443/udp"
        depends_on:
          - proxy
        volumes:
          - ./Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile:ro
          - caddy_data:/data
          - caddy_config:/config
    volumes:
      caddy_data:
      caddy_config:
    

    Launching the instance

    Before starting the stack, we have a few things left to do:

    • Create the folders for pictrs and postgres to store their data: mkdir -p volumes/postgres volumes/pictrs
    • Change the owner of volumes/pictrs: sudo chown -R 991:991 pictrs

    Finally, to start everything: docker compose up -d