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I'm trying to stand up a Lemmy instance, and for some reason I'm just not getting it. I've got a fair bit of experience in Linux and Docker. NPM is new to me, but doesn't seem difficult.

I've looked over several walkthroughs but it seems like they all don't quite work right. Does someone have a clear step-by-step that works, or could take the time to remote in and help me get this up?

I'm running on VMWare ESXi, and I've tried both Debian and Ubuntu to get the server up. Closest I got, the Docker containers would start but seem to be throwing errors internally and don't connect to one another.

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[–] sven@l.mchome.net 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hopefully this will help someone. This seems to work for me. Subscribed communities update, I am able to post. I'm the only user right now on my server. NPM took me a bit of messing around with the config but I think I have everything working, some of this may be redundant / non functional but I don't have the will to go line by line to see what more I can take out. Here is how I have it configured. Note that some things go to the Lemmy UI port and some to the Lemmy port. These should be defined in your docker-compose if you're using that. (Mine is below)

On the first tab in NPM, "Details" I have the following:

Scheme: http
Hostname: <docker ip>
Port: <lemmy-ui port>
Block Common Exploits and Websockets Support are enabled.

On the Custom Locations page, I added 4 locations, you have to do one for each directory even though the ip/ports are the same.

Location: /api
Scheme: http
Hostname: <docker ip>
Port: <lemmy port>

Repeat the above for "/feeds", "/pictrs", and "/nodeinfo". The example file they give also says to have ".well_known" in there but as far as I know that's just for Let's Encrypt which NPM should be handling for us.

On the SSL tab, I have a Let's Encrypt certificate set up. Force SSL, HTTP/2 Support, and HSTS Enabled.

On the Advanced tab, I have the following:

 location / {

   set $proxpass "http://<docker ip>:<lemmy-ui port>";
   if ($http_accept = "application/activity+json") {

     set $proxpass "http://<docker ip>:<lemmy-ui port>";`
   }
   if ($http_accept = "application/ld+json; profile=\"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams\"") {
     set $proxpass "http://<docker ip>:<lemmy-ui port>";
   }
   if ($request_method = POST) {
     set $proxpass "http://<docker ip>:<lemmy-ui port>";
   }
   proxy_pass $proxpass;
   
   rewrite ^(.+)/+$ $1 permanent;
    # Send actual client IP upstream
   proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
   proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
 }

I probably should add in my docker compose file as well... I'm far from a docker expert. This is reasonably close to their examples and others I found. I removed nginx from in here since we already have a proxy. I disabled all the debug logging because it was using disk space. I also removed all the networking lines because I'm not smart enough to figure it all out right now. If you use this, look out for the < > sections, you need to set your own domain/hostname, and postgres user/password.

version: "3.3"

services:
  lemmy:
    image: dessalines/lemmy:0.17.3
    hostname: lemmy
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8536:8536
    environment:
      - RUST_LOG="warn"
      - RUST_BACKTRACE=full
    volumes:
      - ./lemmy.hjson:/config/config.hjson:Z
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - pictrs

  lemmy-ui:
    image: dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.17.4
    # use this to build your local lemmy ui image for development
    # run docker compose up --build
    # assuming lemmy-ui is cloned besides lemmy directory
    # build:
    #   context: ../../lemmy-ui
    #   dockerfile: dev.dockerfile
    ports:
      - 1234:1234
    environment:
      # this needs to match the hostname defined in the lemmy service
      - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST=lemmy:8536
      # set the outside hostname here
      - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST=< domain name>
      - LEMMY_HTTPS=false
      - LEMMY_UI_DEBUG=true
    depends_on:
      - lemmy
    restart: always

  pictrs:
    image: asonix/pictrs:0.4.0-beta.19
    # this needs to match the pictrs url in lemmy.hjson
    hostname: pictrs
    # we can set options to pictrs like this, here we set max. image size and forced format for conversion
    # entrypoint: /sbin/tini -- /usr/local/bin/pict-rs -p /mnt -m 4 --image-format webp
    environment:
      - PICTRS_OPENTELEMETRY_URL=http://otel:4137
      - PICTRS__API_KEY=API_KEY
      - RUST_LOG=debug
      - RUST_BACKTRACE=full
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__VIDEO_CODEC=vp9
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__GIF__MAX_WIDTH=256
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__GIF__MAX_HEIGHT=256
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__GIF__MAX_AREA=65536
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__GIF__MAX_FRAME_COUNT=400
    user: 991:991
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/pictrs:/mnt:Z
    restart: always

  postgres:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    # this needs to match the database host in lemmy.hson
    # Tune your settings via
    # https://pgtune.leopard.in.ua/#/
    # You can use this technique to add them here
    # https://stackoverflow.com/a/30850095/1655478
    hostname: postgres
    command:
      [
        "postgres",
        "-c",
        "session_preload_libraries=auto_explain",
        "-c",
        "auto_explain.log_min_duration=5ms",
        "-c",
        "auto_explain.log_analyze=true",
        "-c",
        "track_activity_query_size=1048576",
      ]
    ports:
      # use a different port so it doesnt conflict with potential postgres db running on the host
      - "5433:5432"
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=< dbuser >
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=< dbpassword>
      - POSTGRES_DB=lemmy
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data:Z
    restart: always

There's another post over here https://fernchat.esotericmonkey.com/post/277 with a similar setup, less stuff in the Advanced tab. If I'm bad at explaining maybe another guide will help.

[–] TerryMathews@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

This worked for me, with one note:

and need to be lemmy and password if you're using the stock lemmy.hjson file, or the lemmy_lemmy_1 container will get stuck in a reboot loop. There's no define in the stock file in githubusercontent currently for those, so you have to add them by hand.

For security, you have to change these.