Discourse KISS

An unofficial container image for Discourse.

This an alternative (simpler and better) way to run discourse. See the Related section below for a comparison.

Getting Started

Choose one of the 3 supported methods.

Manually

This image can be used anywhere OCI containers can be used.

1. Prepare dependencies: an OCI container runtime, PostgreSQL, Redis
2. Optional: Nginx
3. Create a discourse.conf with your hostname, redis and db details.
4. Start the container.

• You should map /shared to a persistent volume.
• Map port 3000 to host port 80 or point your nginx instance to it.

1. In the container, run:

bundle exec rake assets:precompile
bundle exec rake admin:create

1. Open the mapped port in your browser.

With Podman

mkdir -p data/sql
sudo podman play kube pod.yaml
sudo podman exec -it discourse-kiss-app bundle exec rake assets:precompile
sudo podman exec -it discourse-kiss-app bundle exec rake admin:create
open http://localhost:8014/

to update the image:

sudo podman build -t docker.io/0ex0/discourse-kiss .

With docker-compose

docker-compose up
docker-compose run app bundle exec rake assets:precompile
docker-compose run app bundle exec rake admin:create
open http://localhost:8014/

Maintenance

Using a relative URL root

The default config is to serve the forum at http://localhost:8014/forum/. This is configurable by:

• edit discourse.conf, relative_url_root
• replace all instances of /forum/ in nginx.conf with /
• see Upstream docs

admin tasks

misc:

bundle exec script/discourse ...
bundle exec rake --tasks

settings:

bundle exec rake site_settings:export > settings.yml
bundle exec rake site_settings:import < settings.yml

upstream docs:

• dev install guide

discourse config

• https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/master/config
  • discourse_defaults.conf
  • site_settings.yml - defaults, but can be set via UI and saved in DB
  • database.yml - does not seem needed
• https://edgeryders.eu/t/discourse-admin-manual/6647

podman

to start a shell in the pod:

  podman run -it --pod discourse-kiss alpine

redis

to configure the password:

  docker-compose run redis redis-cli -h redis
  redis:6379> config set requirepass password123

postgresql

shell client:

  docker-compose exec -u 0 postgresql psql -U postgres

reference

• entrypoint.sh.
• initdb cannot be run as root

Image Notes

webserver

• Unicorn is a Rack HTTP server to serve Ruby web applications
• with podman/compose examples, exposed at http://localhost:8013/forum

Related

Official Launcher

repo / image

Compared to the official method discourse-kiss:

• -a smaller image: XXX vs 1GB- (TODO)
• works with plain any standard OCI runtime, like k8s.
• doesn't require a custom "templating" system

Bitnami Image

repo

• I tried this image first (Aug 2020), but wasn't satisfied.
• I wasn't about to get a custom discorse.conf working because (1) the "installer" would complain if there was only one config file in the config directory and (2) migrations didn't work with a custom config.
• I sometimes encountered an ERROR ELOOP bug. The Issue was closed even though it wasn't fixed.
• It uses a custom package system called nami and did way too much magic for my liking.
• It took minutes everytime it was started because it recompiled all the static assets of discourse.
• I encountered a few other bugs that didn't increase my confidence in this package.
• uses Passenger, an HTTP proxy and process manager.