(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:161:56I’m not sure what to do at this point, so I would be very appreciative of any help with this issue.
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 keeps restarting (as I detailed more in my original post and other replies here) because it can’t access the database.
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_1docker rm lemmyname_postgres_1now re run the ansible playbook and let’s see if that works.
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, same error - did not find any relations.
This alternative installer might be a way around this issue: https://github.com/ubergeek77/Lemmy-Easy-Deploy
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:161:56sudo docker psoutput: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-1well, 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/shonce you’re on the container
ifconfigwhich should return on the second line: inet addr:172.18.0.4 (or similar ipV4 address)
exitto 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/shnow 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/shon the docker containers the nc command should return something like
172.18.0.4 (172.18.0.4:5432) open
is that working?
It is honestly far too late for me to keep troubleshooting - I’ll be back here tomorrow afternoon (CDT). Until then!
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/