(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.
Sounds like your Postgres instance is offline. Any logs from that container?
The postgres container appears to be running.
sudo docker ps
output:CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES e305af2b91c8 dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.17.4 "docker-entrypoint.s…" 27 minutes ago Up 27 minutes 127.0.0.1:12074->1234/tcp lemmyname_lemmy-ui_1 3978157ef390 dessalines/lemmy:0.17.4 "/app/lemmy" 27 minutes ago Restarting (101) 34 seconds ago lemmyname_lemmy_1 626d7792534b asonix/pictrs:0.3.1 "/sbin/tini -- /usr/…" 27 minutes ago Up 27 minutes 6669/tcp, 127.0.0.1:21166->8080/tcp lemmyname_pictrs_1 65eab82adee9 mwader/postfix-relay "/root/run" 27 minutes ago Up 27 minutes 25/tcp lemmyname_postfix_1 2ab8c789fdcd postgres:15-alpine "docker-entrypoint.s…" 27 minutes ago Up 27 minutes 5432/tcp lemmyname_postgres_1
Container logs: …
PostgreSQL init process complete; ready for start up. 2023-06-18 01:57:16.112 UTC [1] LOG: starting PostgreSQL 15.3 on x86_64-pc-linux-musl, compiled by gcc (Alpine 12.2.1_git20220924-r10) 12.2.1 20220924, 64-bit 2023-06-18 01:57:16.112 UTC [1] LOG: listening on IPv4 address "0.0.0.0", port 5432 2023-06-18 01:57:16.112 UTC [1] LOG: listening on IPv6 address "::", port 5432 2023-06-18 01:57:16.113 UTC [1] LOG: listening on Unix socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432" 2023-06-18 01:57:16.117 UTC [53] LOG: database system was shut down at 2023-06-18 01:57:16 UTC 2023-06-18 01:57:16.123 UTC [1] LOG: database system is ready to accept connections 2023-06-18 02:02:16.215 UTC [51] LOG: checkpoint starting: time 2023-06-18 02:02:20.329 UTC [51] LOG: checkpoint complete: wrote 44 buffers (0.3%); 0 WAL file(s) added, 0 removed, 0 recycled; write=4.110 s, sync=0.003 s, total=4.115 s; sync files=12, longest=0.002 s, average=0.001 s; distance=252 kB, estimate=252 kB
Can you log into it using your password? If so, then the network between the two isn’t working properly and you’ll need to check your Docker network config.
I just installed using a different OS (Debian) and it works. Not sure why, but I’ll take it. Posting from my new instance!
Is there a postgresql docker container running?
Yes, I posted the docker status info and logs from the container in my reply to Veraticus
suggest you check postgres is running, accepting connections and returning results on the container first:
docker exec -it lemmyname_postgres_1 /bin/bash
assuming you can connect to the docker container and see a prompt, does this command put you at a sql prompt?
psql -U lemmy -d lemmy
if so, let’s confirm that a sql command works.
select name from person;
(will likely be an empty set if you haven’t set up an admin user yet).Does all this work OK?
docker exec -it lemmyname_postgres_1 /bin/bash
returns the bash prompt as expected:2ab8c789fdcd:/
psql -U lemmy -d lemmy
successfully opens psql:psql (15.3) Type "help" for help. lemmy=#
ran
select name from person;
from the psql shell, it does look empty (haven’t created any users yet):ERROR: relation "person" does not exist LINE 1: select name from person;
it should return an empty set. It looks like the database is running but the lemmy database tables were not installed. Can you get back to the sql prompt and try
\dt
if the database was installed correctly, you should see something like this:
lemmy-# \dt
List of relations
Schema | Name | Type | Owner
--------±---------------------------±------±------
public | __diesel_schema_migrations | table | lemmy
public | activity | table | lemmy . .
<more tables>
. .
public | person | table | lemmy
. . .
can you check that the tables are actually there? My guess is that the tables in the database weren’t created. assuming you don’t see any tables when you do this, again at the sql prompt, please try
\c lemmy
and see if it connects? if it does, it will say You are now connected to database “lemmy” as user “lemmy”.
Let me know what the result of that is and we’ll try to figure out what’s gone wrong with the database setup because it looks like that’s your problem - the database was not populated when it was created.
\c lemmy
does return “You are now connected to database “lemmy” as user “lemmy””Running \dt after connecting returns “Did not find any relations”, so it looks like you were right and the database didn’t get populated.
ok thanks - I’m not very familiar with the lemmy installation process so I will need to check if possibly the schema objects in the database aren’t created until the admin user is first set up, which is another possibility, but they definitely aren’t there right now - I’ll set up a fresh install to check in a few minutes.
Switching gears a bit - when you say you can’t access the web UI, can you elaborate on that? The web server should be running. You are going to https://your.url, presumably and then what do you actually see in the browser? It should show an initial setup screen - do you not see anything or is there some kind of error message? When the ansible script runs to create the instance does it throw any errors at all or everything looks happy in the output, including creation of your ssl certs?
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. When I do get error pages, they are served via https at least, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that part.
I assume this is because the lemmy backend container is continually restarting (as I detailed more in my original post and other replies here) due to database connection errors