Custom IP Binding for Discourse Dev Installation

Looking at discourse source code is there some way to get a dev install to bind to a custom ip or public ip?

Yes, you can bind a Discourse development installation to a custom IP address or public IP. This is typically controlled via your web server or the configuration of the Discourse app itself.

For Discourse running in development mode via the Rails server, you can specify the IP address it binds to when you start the server. By default, it binds to localhost

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Start the Rails server with a custom IP:
   You can specify the IP address and port when you start the Rails server by using the -b (bind) option:

   bundle exec rails server -b 0.0.0.0 -p 3000
   

   Replace 0.0.0.0 with the custom IP address you want to bind to. The 0.0.0.0 address binds it to all available IP addresses on the host machine.

2. Updating configuration:
   Sometimes, you might want to update the Discourse configuration files to set the IP address.

If you want to check the exact configuration options available in the source code, I can look up the specific configuration files within the Discourse repository. Let me know if you want me to retrieve details from specific files.

ok but search the source code there may be a custom ENV var for it…

GitHub code search

Searched for 'bind address' in discourse/discourse

GitHub code search

Searched for 'bind IP' in discourse/discourse

It appears that the Discourse repository includes a relevant environment variable named UNICORN_BIND_ALL, which is used in the unicorn configuration. You can use this environment variable to control the IP address that the Unicorn server binds to. Here are the details:

• File: config/unicorn.conf.rb

• Code Snippet:

  listen ENV["UNICORN_LISTENER"] || "#{(ENV["UNICORN_BIND_ALL"] ? "" : "127.0.0.1:")}#{(ENV["UNICORN_PORT"] || 3000).to_i}"
  

• File: bin/docker/boot_dev

• Code Snippet:

  -v "$SOURCE_DIR:/src:delegated" \
  -e UNICORN_BIND_ALL=true \
  $mount_plugin_symlinks \
  

Setting the Environment Variable

To bind Discourse to all available IP addresses or a specific IP address, you can set the UNICORN_BIND_ALL environment variable to true. Here’s how you could do it:

1. Bind to All IP Addresses:

   export UNICORN_BIND_ALL=true
   

2. Specify a Custom IP Address:
   If you want to bind to a specific IP address, set the UNICORN_LISTENER environment variable instead. For example, to bind to the IP address 192.168.1.100 on port 3000:

   export UNICORN_LISTENER="192.168.1.100:3000"
   

Running the Server

After setting the appropriate environment variable, you can start the Unicorn server normally:

bundle exec rails server -b 0.0.0.0 -p 3000

Setting these environment variables ensures the Unicorn web server component in Discourse will bind to the desired IP address.

Hmmm what about ember cli? can you quote the relevant code as well?

GitHub code search

Searched for 'EMBER_CLI' in discourse/discourse

GitHub code search

Searched for 'ember server' in discourse/discourse

GitHub code search

Searched for 'cli' in discourse/discourse

The search results show various usages and configurations for ember-cli, but nothing directly related to setting a custom IP address. However, there’s enough information to infer how you can specify custom IP settings for the Ember CLI server in a Discourse development setup.

Here are a few relevant snippets and explanations:

1. bin/ember-cli

• File: bin/ember-cli
• Code Snippet:

  exec "yarn -s --cwd #{YARN_DIR} run ember #{command} --help"
  

2. package.json

• File: package.json
• Code Snippet:

  "scripts": {
    "dev": "concurrently \\\"bin/ember-cli server --environment=development\\\" \\\"RAILS_ENV=development bin/rails server\\\"",
  }
  

Running the Ember CLI with Custom IP

To run the Ember CLI server and bind it to a specific IP address, you can pass it as an argument when you start the server. Here’s how:

bin/ember-cli --address 0.0.0.0 --port 4200

Replace 0.0.0.0 with the specific IP address you want to bind to.

For a development environment, you can start both Rails and Ember CLI servers concurrently, ensuring both are accessible from the desired IP:

concurrently "bin/ember-cli --environment=development --address 0.0.0.0 --port 4200" "RAILS_ENV=development bin/rails server -b 0.0.0.0 -p 3000"

The concurrently command is configured in your package.json to run both servers simultaneously.

These adjustments should allow you to bind the Ember CLI and Rails server to specific or public IP addresses, making them accessible from other machines on the network.