Issues encountered while installing on Ubuntu 22.04

[ecton]

Issue Summary

These are the problems I encountered trying to follow the guide on join-lemmy.org.

When trying to use docker-compose, I could not get external email delivery working due to the private networking on the main lemmy container. It simply times out when a local address is not used for delivery.

Rather than worry about postfix, I switched to installing from Scratch. Here are the issues I encountered:

• sudo -iu postgres psql -c "CREATE USER lemmy WITH PASSWORD 'db-passwd';" -- This line is missing SUPERUSER. db-init.sh, which is referenced on the configuration page, creates the user with superuser permissions. Without this, a cryptic error "Couldn't run DB Migrations" is displayed, with no further information about the error encountered. I see there might be work towards removing this requirement, but right now, the guide doesn't work as-written.
• cargo install lemmy_server --target-dir /usr/bin [...] This doesn't actually place lemmy_server in /usr/bin. It uses /usr/bin as the target directory for cargo when building. I believe --root is what is meant to be used here. For me, lemmy_server ended up in /root/.cargo/bin/.
• curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | sudo -E bash - When finally getting to the yarn install instruction, I learn that at a minimum, Node 14 is required.

I wanted to report these issues I had in hopes that the guide can be improved to help others install Lemmy more easily.

Steps to Reproduce

Try following the guide on a fresh Ubuntu 22.04 server.

[ctsrc]

This doesn't actually place lemmy_server in /usr/bin. It uses /usr/bin as the target directory for cargo when building. I believe --root is what is meant to be used here.

Correct. I ran into the same problem.

Documentation https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/from_scratch.html should be changed

The correct command that it should say is

cargo install lemmy_server --root /usr/ --locked --features embed-pictrs

Then we get the final binary in /usr/bin/ as it should be, and we avoid most of the build garbage being put in system dirs.

Although it does seem to still result in .crates.toml and .crates2.json files being placed in /usr/.

[ctsrc]

a cryptic error "Couldn't run DB Migrations" is displayed, with no further information about the error encountered

I see a similar message on my machine, having followed the original guide.

2023-06-12T18:40:45.893739Z  INFO lemmy_db_schema::utils: Running Database migrations (This may take a long time)...
thread 'main' panicked at 'Couldn't run DB Migrations', /root/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/lemmy_db_schema-0.17.3/src/utils.rs:165:25
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace

Will try your suggestion about making the db lemmy user a db superuser. But I am questioning if that is really ideal. In my case I am running a separate PostgreSQL server for Lemmy, so for me it is not a big deal. But for people having different databases with different data on one shared PostgreSQL server it does not seem desirable to have the lemmy db user be a db superuser.

[ctsrc]

I changed the lemmy user to a superuser

psql -c "ALTER USER lemmy WITH SUPERUSER;"

but for some reason I still get "Couldn't run DB Migrations", even though my lemmy db user is now a db superuser :S

\du

                                   List of roles
 Role name |                         Attributes                         | Member of 
-----------+------------------------------------------------------------+-----------
 lemmy     | Superuser                                                  | {}
 postgres  | Superuser, Create role, Create DB, Replication, Bypass RLS | {}

[ctsrc]

For me the second issue with "Couldn't run DB Migrations" was that one of the migrations https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/25275b79eed0fb1fe90d27c197725f510f9965bb/migrations/2021-09-20-112945_jwt-secret/up.sql need the pgcrypto extension.

On the platform I am running on, FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE, this required that in addition to having postgresql15-server installed I also needed to have postgresql15-contrib installed.

[retiolus]

I get a working installation by following these steps, however, --features embed-pictrs seems to be ignored in my case.

[yaneony]

I get a working installation by following these steps, however, --features embed-pictrs seems to be ignored in my case.

Website is down. Possibly theres any backup or other source?!

[retiolus]

Website is down. Possibly theres any backup or other source?!

Not down on my end? You can check it here if you still have issues: https://web.archive.org/web/20230619234739/https://retiolus.net/posts/how-to-install-lemmy-from-scratch/