Hi, I followed this instruction guide, but the “site can’t be reached” error occurs after installation. Does anyone have an idea how to fix this?
AI-generated summary
The user Yucheng_Jiang installed Discourse but encountered the “site can’t be reached” error. itsbhanusharma suggested checking DNS configuration and firewall settings, which Yucheng_Jiang found to be inactive. Stephen asked about the server hosting location and DNS settings, which Yucheng_Jiang confirmed were correct.
The issue was later identified as an SSL problem due to exceeding the Let’s Encrypt certificate issuance limit. Stephen explained that reissuing a certificate more than 5 times in a week would trigger a cooldown period. To resolve the issue, Stephen suggested waiting a week or using a different DNS name. Yucheng_Jiang planned to try setting up an alternative A record, such as “forum-test.7debate.club”, which Stephen confirmed would be a viable solution.
You’ll have to give more info than that for us to be able to help you.
First of all, you should confirm that your dns is properly configured and next step would be to make sure a firewall is not blocking ports 80 & 443 for discourse.
A quick stupid question… how to check this?
Does this error indicate something?
root@vultr:/var/discourse# curl http://149.28.40.194/
curl: (7) Failed to connect to 149.28.40.194 port 80: Connection refused
connection refused means something is preventing connections to your server. Which host are you using?
What do you mean by “which host”? Ip address?
I mean the VPS provider? is it vultr? have you configured discourse to use a FQDN?
Additionally, can you confirm what OS you’ve configured on your VPS? if it is ubuntu 18.04 or higher, can you post the output of sudo ufw status ?
yes, i’m using ubuntu 18.04
root@JYC_Test:/var/discourse# sudo ufw status
Status: inactive
Sure, but where is the server hosted?
Have you confirmed that the “A” record for your DNS address is resolving to the droplet IP?
How was this installed? The standard installation checks these things before the server is installed.
A record is correct. Because I literally did the same process a few days ago on the same server, and it worked perfectly fine.
I reset the server to install it again today, this error occurs.
You haven’t answered both questions.
You mean the physical location? New Jersey
So it’s at DigitalOcean, or?
No, it’s our club’s server.
Is it ssl problem?
when I try
./laucher logs app
it shows
nginx: [emerg] cannot load certificate "/shared/ssl/forum.7debate.club.cer": PEM_read_bio_X509_AUX() failed (SSL: error:0909006C:PEM routines:get_name:no start line:Expecting: TRUSTED CERTIFICATE)
How many times did you try setting the site up? If that’s a Let’s Encrypt certificate then they do have an issuance limit, and a cooldown period.
Quite a few…
since i’m new to this, so I messed up a few times. Definitely more than 5 times i think
Can I solve this by changing to another url?
In which case that’s almost certainly the problem.
You can only reissue 5 times in a week, so if you’re set on that DNS name you won’t be able to reinstall until a week has passed.
Renewals are treated specially: they don’t count against your Certificates per Registered Domain limit, but they are subject to a Duplicate Certificate limit of 5 per week
Once you have everything installed just backup your instance. That way if you want to make changes you can just restore a fresh site.
So can I solve this problem by setting another A record like “forum-test.7debate.club”?
Or use a different term that isn’t temporary, such as discussions, community, etc.