Hi. I’m trying to wipe out my production server, and I want to know what I am doing wrong (apart from “trying to wipe out my production server” which sounds really wrong, but it’s not really in production yet, I am just working on a migration). I am using the Discourse Docker installation, which a …

Just to leave some feedback here, since I had to re-do this today. What eventually worked for me is to delete the full /docker-app/standalone directory no need to stop the container, the next command includes that in its script run ./launcher rebuild app the rebuild took about 10 minutes and incl…

If you want to blow away the database the easiest way is to delete the postgres stuff in /var/discourse/shared/standalone and then rebuild. (from outside the container). But this is simpler: cd /var/discourse ./launcher stop app rm -rf shared ./launcher rebuild app

Is there any difference in terms of what gets deleted? I’d like to keep theme changes and settings, and delete only users, post data, etc. Does this method differ from the rake commands in terms of how much it recreates? I don’t mind losing everything if necessary, I can redo the cosmetic changes,…

[image] pgr: I’d like to keep theme changes and settings, and delete only users, post data, etc. That’s not what you asked for. :wink: Themes are all in the database. You can export the themes and reimport them on the new site. You can search here for ways to export and restore site settin…

I was willing to go ahead with the rake commands and then find out if I still had my custom theme. :smile: But I have the necessary files to put it back in place. Ok, so if your method is simple enough and equivalent to the other I will probably just try it. Should I worry about my database owner…

If you use the launcher command it does the Right Thing. If you were to use an external database then it’d be more difficult.

Thank you Jay, you were very helpful as always.

Is it wrong not to have the database ownership set to discourse user? A. NOt exactly Did I do this setup error? Or maybe my colleague. But what I mean to ask is: isn’t this something that comes with the Docker container provided? A. yes, this is something that comes with the Docker container pr…

This image was installed months ago, in Sep 2018. Now that I am rebuilding, should I do any updates/upgrades first? Can somebody point me to a nice tutorial for this, or at least tell what I should be searching for?

[image] pgr: Now that I am rebuilding, should I do any updates/upgrades first? Rebuilding will take care of updating to latest :wink:

I did this procedure, and the rebuild went fine (and ran all the updates as promised - :cool:!). BUT my data is still there. Deleting shared didn’t delete my data. Judging by the results of du I think my data is in standalone subdir, not in shared subdir… root@discourse:/docker-app/discourse# du -…

DB Ownership / Wiping out Production

Product Support Self-hosting

pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman) April 5, 2019, 12:17pm 4

That’s not what you asked for.

Themes are all in the database.

You can export the themes and reimport them on the new site. You can search here for ways to export and restore site settings.

Topic		Replies	Views
Failing update Self-hosting	32	1097	August 26, 2025
Rebuild fails: Data directory /shared/postgres_data must not be owned by root Self-hosting	4	793	February 5, 2025
Strange Postgres DB Issue with New Install Self-hosting	13	1618	March 16, 2020
Upgrade failed Self-hosting	11	1099	January 5, 2023
Accessing Database while discourse not running Development	0	164	April 19, 2025

DB Ownership / Wiping out Production

Related topics