Issues hosting Lemmy (via ansible)

posted 1 year ago

(Using https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible)

The ansible-playbook command itself connected to the VPS and completed without any errors or warnings. This is on a completely fresh VPS with Ubuntu Server 22.04.

I created all directories needed in the guide, and the only file I modified was the inventory/hosts file - filling in the username/domain for SSH, domain name, contact email and adding the location of the private key for SSH.

The guide didn’t note any changes to config.hjson I needed to make, so I copied that file as requested but left it with the default content. I’m thinking if I missed something it’s most likely there.

I couldn’t access the web UI and with some investigation I found the dessalines/lemmy:0.17.4 (backend) container is continually restarting, apparently because it can’t reach the database - sudo docker container logs <id> returns the following:

thread 'main' panicked at 'Error connecting to postgres://lemmy:PasswordRedacted@postgres:5432/lemmy', crates/db_schema/src/utils.rs:161:56

I’m not sure what to do at this point, so I would be very appreciative of any help with this issue.

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aranym@lemmy.worldOP

1 point

1 year ago

No errors of any kind in the ansible script. nginx is running, and it’s at https://lemmy.name - I get some gateway timeout errors once in a while, but that’s all. I assume this is because the lemmy container keeps restarting (as I mentioned in my original post) because it can’t access the database.

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fuser@quex.cc

1 point

1 year ago

Ok so I ran a clean install and confirmed that the database objects exist. So that’s definitely the problem. Your database is munted. An interesting thing happened when I re-ran the playbook - I noticed it didn’t rebuild the postgres container. Very suspicious! Let’s try blowing it away completely and re-running your script:

docker stop lemmyname_postgres_1

docker rm lemmyname_postgres_1

now re run the ansible playbook and let’s see if that works.

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aranym@lemmy.worldOP

0 points

1 year ago

Ran those commands successfully, then the playbook again. Playbook has zero errors or warnings.

The postgres container was remade… with the same broken database. Went into it with psql like before, did \c lemmy, then \dt - same error - did not find any relations.

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fuser@quex.cc

1 point

1 year ago

weird. it’s like it failed to install the postgres public schema properly. I am not at all familiar with ansible but I see you can set verbosity. Do you think it would be worth trying that?

According to link below you can preface your playbook command with ANSIBLE_DEBUG=true ANSIBLE_VERBOSITY=4

https://www.shellhacks.com/ansible-enable-debug-increase-verbosity/

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fuser@quex.cc

1 point

1 year ago

This alternative installer might be a way around this issue: https://github.com/ubergeek77/Lemmy-Easy-Deploy

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aranym@lemmy.worldOP

1 point

1 year ago

Wiped the VPS clean, new 22.04 server install.

Deployed using that installer.

Exact same issue. The lemmy container cannot reach the database and continually restarts. I’ll post some logs, but they’re practically identical to what I posted before:

lemmy container logs:

`thread 'main' panicked at 'Error connecting to postgres://lemmy:PasswordRedacted@postgres:5432/lemmy', crates/db_schema/src/utils.rs:161:56

sudo docker ps output:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                        COMMAND                  CREATED          STATUS
 PORTS                                                                                         NAMES
9eaa62ea6f99   caddy:latest                 "caddy run --config …"   12 minutes ago   Up 12 minutes
 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, :::80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp, :::443->443/tcp, 443/udp, 2019/tcp   lemmy-easy-deploy-proxy-1
a10009ed128d   dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.17.4   "docker-entrypoint.s…"   12 minutes ago   Up 12 minutes
                                                                                               lemmy-easy-deploy-lemmy-ui-1
a166b1486d51   dessalines/lemmy:0.17.4      "/app/lemmy"             12 minutes ago   Restarting (101) 41 seconds ago                                                                                                 lemmy-easy-deploy-lemmy-1
08329653260b   asonix/pictrs:0.3.1          "/sbin/tini -- /usr/…"   12 minutes ago   Up 12 minutes
 6669/tcp, 8080/tcp                                                                            lemmy-easy-deploy-pictrs-1
51af8f312511   postgres:15-alpine           "docker-entrypoint.s…"   12 minutes ago   Up 12 minutes
                                                                                               lemmy-easy-deploy-postgres-1

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fuser@quex.cc

1 point

1 year ago

well, that rules out your local system and ansible, at least. It seems like there’s an inability for the docker containers to reach postgres definitely at the install and probably at runtime - can we check this?

first let’s make sure the postgres container is on the network and has an address:

sudo docker exec -it <yourinstance>_postgres_1 /bin/sh

once you’re on the container

ifconfig

which should return on the second line: inet addr:172.18.0.4 (or similar ipV4 address)

exit to return to the host and let’s test connecting from the host :

nc -zv 172.18.0.4 5432 (use IP from the DB container)

Ubuntu host should respond something like : Connection to 172.18.0.4 5432 port [tcp/postgresql] succeeded!

now let’s try the containers

sudo docker exec -it <yourinstance>_lemmy-ui_1 /bin/sh

now from that container test connectivity to postgres:

nc -zv 172.18.0.4 5432 (use IP from the DB container)

now the other

sudo docker exec -it <yourinstance>_lemmy_1 /bin/sh

on the docker containers the nc command should return something like

172.18.0.4 (172.18.0.4:5432) open

is that working?

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