I used Lemmy Easy Deploy
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Selfhosted
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I definitely agree on Easy Deploy. Worked right away for my instance.
If your using docker I recommend getting a docker-compose file that does 98% of the config work for you. Pretty sure there's one in the install docs.
I've been having trouble understanding how the docker-compose thing works, and the whole... impermanence of docker containers. Got any tutorials you'd recommend? Note I'm on Windows.
Are you planning to host it on a Windows machine?
If you don't have experience with docker, don't jump straight to docker compose. Start simpler.
If you want to have data persist after a container is killed, have a look at the -v option of "docker run". It allows you to mount a volume.
Yes, I'd be hosting it through Docker Desktop on my Windows server.
Most programs I'd want to host, including Lemmy, pretty much only seem to work through docker-compose.
What are the errors?
I got mine running via Docker by copying the docker-compose, nginx, and lemmy.hjson files from the lemmy-ansible repo. Everything is working so far except votes and comments from other instances. They won't sync for some reason.
Here is mine https://gist.github.com/jeena/6179470a8d616455f30635a5c71f5f64 which had a similar problem with the comments, although I couldn't post comments on my own instance either.
For me the thing was that I had to add:
map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
default upgrade;
'' close;
}
and
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
And also change the nginx in the docker to port 8080 so my normal nginx could keep running on 80 and handle all the ssl certificate stuff.
My setup is:
Browser -> native Nginx -> docker Nginx -> lemmy
Thanks! My set up is a bit different however. I don't use docker nginx and I just use the native one but I do have proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; and proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade; on my nginx.conf.
I could post comments locally on my own instance. That works but I can't see comments or upvotes from other instances but I can see their posts (not all of it though). Likewise, I can see my own instance's posts from another instance but not the comments or upvotes.
My instance is also behind Cloudflare but turning off the proxy doesn't change the behaviour.
I was able to get it running from source on Gentoo (without docker). Building from source is an option but you need to manage the dependencies and daemons yourself. This is my first comment! Good luck with your setup
I've been having issues with 0.17.4. I saw people suggesting a non-docker, build from git method but really wanted docker to work.
I'm now using 0.18.0-rc.4. Built without issue using the dockerhub image and has been stable for 24hrs
Not specific to Lemmy but ubuntu's weird snap version of docker has given me random issues in the past, perhaps that could be the issue. Installing docker by following the official instructions means you are guaranteed to get a fully functional install and that's one variable you wouldn't have to worry about at least.
Edit: Forgot to mention but I'm running it on docker myself, I just followed the official documentation and whatnot. Using a debian 11 based LXC on Proxmox.
I'm using Proxmox and Docker-Compose. My instance is on an alpine LXC.
Very happy with it.
Would it be possible to teach us? Or give a quick step-by-step guide to make in run at least?
Well, if it's your first time selfhosting and setting up your environment, I'd to things in steps. Great thing about virtualization is that you can snapshot.
Once you get proxmox up and running, choose an OS to virtualize, snapshot once made. Snapshot once configuration for users etc, snapshot once docker has been installed, snapshot after docker-compose has been configured.. You get the idea.
Set up backup of the VMs/containers, set up lemmy using the official docker-compose step-by-step guide. Once you reach it on port 80, set up nginx.
Since messing around with Linux more than 10 years ago, I always had the idea of self hosting something myself on a headless PC.
Until last year, I had the bad habit (for today's standards) to host everything on a single machine. My Linux server was my SMB file server, mail server, torrent daemon, minecraft server, firewall, and so on.
Last year, thanks to what I learnt with vmware at work, I decided to install proxmox at home, bought a couple of old PCs so that I could have a 3-nodes Proxmox cluster, and a separate machine for proxmox backup server.
Everything that was running on a single OS before, now has its own VM (for shit like Windows) or LXC (for most of the stuff).
You can say I'm a bit of an old school user now, so maybe you can understand me if I think that running lemmy, inside a docker compose for lemmy, inside its own container, inside proxmox, sounds like a weird recipe for a lot of overhead.
It seems all the cool stuff on github now always have the instructions that start with "step 1: install docker" which, honestly in a virtualized environment, I'm not sure we still need it.
Anyway, back to your post, I tried to follow both the "docker" and the "from scratch" documentation but they're clearly lacking some steps because I failed miserably every time I tried.
I had some luck with the prebuilt images from dessalines' dockerhub and using the compose file in the repo with logging commented out.
It was stable for about a week before I tried to update and broke my database and federation completely. I might try again when 0.18 stable drops.
always make a database backup before performing upgrade.
another docker user here. Why does our thumbnails look the same :) I know there is something wrong with my setup. I made a post here https://leddit.minnal.icu/post/1045 but still no idea.
The docker compose stack is pretty straightforward, i just use the images dessalines/lemmy:0.17.4 and dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.17.4 instead of trying to build them
Post your docker-compose file and error message here so people can actually provide advises for your setup.
The Ansible method is easy and worked fine for me on 22.04: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible
Just remember to setup ssh without a password using this command from your local machine:
ssh-copy-id yourserver.com
I'm a fan of just straight up Debian, so I went the https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible route on my VPS with Debian 11 stable.
Ansible worked really well for me
You are using two technologies that have a bad of working like shit, together; Ubuntu/snap and docker. You can try podman if you want, or a different distro. Or, at least, install the official docker way.
Kubernetes
Will self-hosting Lenny have the limitation that you’ll be missing a lot of comments when subscribing to magazines from other instances? I am considering it tough
Comments federate to instances with subscribed users for that community. The first time a user subscribes to the community federation will start and future comments will begin to show up on the instance. Can’t see old comments… on smaller/self instances that problem will be more visible.
On my soapbox (mastodon) instance I have made this modification so that I can open posts on its original instance. This might be good to have in Lemmy too then.
No but I feel finding new communities is more difficult
Using the ansible playbook i was up and running in 20 min on a do droplet
Been trying for like 2 weeks - Lemmy Easy Deploy, a couple different guides through google, couple different youtube vids, the official docs. In and out of docker, always with a fresh VM (Debian and Ubuntu)... It always installs without errors, but never get it to load the page in a browser. Not sure what's wrong, maybe just cursed.
I tried with the official docker way, and failed too many times :) . Then I decided to lurk around some public instances and let the platform mature for a little bit more. The problem is usually the docker build fails.
Same, I tried on a fresh Ubuntu, a fresh Debian, with Docker, from scratch, using the package manager's Rust, using the official Rust script, etc. (I really wanted to run an instance...)
It fails somewhere everytime.
The documentation is lacking, and/or I'm more ignorant about this than I thought.
I spawned up a LXC in my Proxmox for it as soon as the Reddit fiasco began. Originally tried the Docker way, failed... My Docker is installed the official way by the way. Tried the "install from scratch" way, also failed... Finally gave the source a casual read and decided to compile it from source.
The pict-rs bit is a hassle. It has taken me some time to get all the dependencies right and compile Imagemagick version 7 for Ubuntu 22.04 from source. But it worked eventually.
I then installed the rust toolchain and checked out the latest stable release tag at the time aka 0.17.3 and compiled lemmy. Nothing went astray and I followed the remaining steps in the "install from scratch" doc to complete the setup.
P.S. Oh right you need to make the lemmy PostgreSQL user SUPERUSER otherwise the database migration script would not work. A commit was already made to make it unnecessary. It will make its way to 0.18.0 release I guess.
I initially encountered some issues in federation. Subscriptions stuck at pending for remote instances, regardless of their size and traffic. I tried many ways and still it did not work. I have thought of axing the container and restarting from the beginning.
While I was weighing my options, I found an advice in an issue at lemmy GitHub repo that suggested the problem was leftover from previous hostname changes and dumping the existing database and recreating from sketch would help. I have indeed altered the hostname once or twice during setup. So I followed the advice and federation is working now.
So far not a butter smooth experience but not the worst either. It does take some troubleshooting capacity and patience. But heck selfhosting has been like that since time immemorial.
I used Ansible to do it, which really just automated a docker install. Oddly, I actually had issues doing docker myself, so maybe I was missing something that it needed.
I've been trying for more than a week. LemmyEasyDeploy worked. But now i'm stuck with ssl certificate.
Lemmy Easy Deploy handles the SSL certificates for you. You don't need to buy them
I get ssl errors when i try to access the site.
Maybe start from scratch? Maybe you could ask the developer. I bought SSL tickets but ended up not needing them
I've started from scratch several times. Never get further than the build command. :) But i will try again later today.
If you post your configs and errors we might be able to help you. I set up a vm with docker compose and proxy it through traefik instead of nginx
I was using the docker-compose file from the official instructions.
Tip: Don't use :dev use :0.17.4
I tried the official setup guide but I never actually got it to work. So many weird problems with ports and intra-Docker networking.
The only version of Lemmy I was able to get working, very easily, was through YunoHost.
Unfortunately, the latest Lemmy version YunoHost supports is 0.16.7. I really hope someone who truly understands setting up these services can help maintain the Lemmy_ynh app, as YunoHost is a great tool for people to self-host with.
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