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Discourse

  • RAM requirements: ~1.5 GB.
  • CPU requirements: 1 core
  • SSD requirements: ~20 GB. May be more over time

Accessible as forum.vcmi.eu

Admin access:

  • Ivan Savenko
  • AVS
  • SXX
  • Warmonger

Additional accounts can be given admin rights via admin panel. Or, if none are available - directly via server console (requires root access to server)

Configuration

  • Located at /var/discourse.
  • Configuration file is at /var/discourse/containers/app.yml
  • For administration typical approach is cd /var/discourse; ./launcher enter app. However most commands are also available in web UI
  • To apply configuration changes, cd /var/discourse; ./launcher rebuild app. WARNING: this will also perform update of Discourse itself!

Setup

References:

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wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discourse/discourse_docker/main/install-discourse | sudo bash

Configure Discourse to run through nginx outside of container, to allow multiple sites to be hosted on same server.

  1. Install nginx
  2. Edit configuration at /var/discourse/containers/app.yml:
  3. Configure nginx server
  4. Rebuild app and restart nginx

Modified configuration file:

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  - "templates/postgres.template.yml"
  - "templates/redis.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.ratelimited.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.socketed.template.yml"  # <-- Added
#   - "templates/web.ssl.template.yml" # remove - https will be handled by outer nginx
#   - "templates/web.letsencrypt.ssl.template.yml" # remove -- https will be handled by outer nginx
# expose: # comment out entire section by putting a # in front of each line
# - "80:80"   # http
# - "443:443" # https

Approximate order of commands:

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cd /var/discourse
apt install nginx
nano containers/app.yml

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available
cp default forum.vcmi.eu
cd ../sites-enabled
ln -s ../sites-available/forum.vcmi.eu

./launcher rebuild app
sudo service nginx reload

Upgrade

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cd /var/discourse
./launcher rebuild app

Alternatively can be done in UI, but untested

Migration

When setting up Discourse, it needs to be already located on target domain name, so it might be a good idea to do operations in following order:

  • create backup on old server (or pick latest weekly backup)
  • switch domain name to new IP & wait for DNS to propagate
  • ensure that ports 80 and 443 are open on new server
  • setup Discourse on new server
  • restore backup either in web interface or in console on new server
  • adjust or migrate configuration file from old server to new one