Hello :blush: I am still trying to create our pipeline to work with Discourse. I have a fresh Redis container and a fresh Postgres container to use with discourse. Next step for me is build the image of the web_only container to then connect them and start the installation if I am right, but I am unable to bootsrap the container. I am getting this error: FAILED -------------------- Pups::ExecError: cd /var/www/discourse && su discourse -c 'bundle exec rake db:migrate' failed with return # Location of failure: /pups/lib/pups/exec_command.rb:112:in `spawn' exec failed with the params {"cd"=>"$home", "hook"=>"db_migrate", "cmd"=>["su discourse -c 'bundle exec rake db:migrate'"]} 0e576a9672a887d23579100756224f920ab595b819874b5e7cbe4868f4234481 ** FAILED TO BOOTSTRAP ** please scroll up and look for earlier error messages, there may be more than one. ./discourse-doctor may help diagnose the problem. I am confused about why is trying to migrate when I have nothing built yet. Am I doing the steps wrong? This is the web_only.yml I am using (pretty basic one): templates: - "templates/web.template.yml" - "templates/web.ratelimited.template.yml" env: LANG: en_US.UTF-8 UNICORN_WORKERS: 2 DISCOURSE_DB_USERNAME: root DISCOURSE_DB_PASSWORD: my-secret-pw DISCOURSE_DB_HOST: 127.0.0.1 DISCOURSE_DB_NAME: communities DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS: 'email@mail.com' DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME: 'localhost' DISCOURSE_REDIS_HOST: 127.0.0.1 SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS: 1 hooks: after_code: - exec: cd: $home/plugins cmd: - mkdir -p plugins - git clone https://github.com/discourse/docker_manager.git - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved.git - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-voting.git - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-slack-official.git - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-assign.git run: - exec: cd: /var/www/discourse cmd: - sed -i 's/GlobalSetting.serve_static_assets/true/' config/environments/production.rb - bash -c "touch -a /shared/log/rails/{sidekiq,puma.err,puma}.log" - bash -c "ln -s /shared/log/rails/{sidekiq,puma.err,puma}.log log/" - sed -i 's/default \$scheme;/default https;/' /etc/nginx/conf.d/discourse.conf Do I need to have a Postgres and a Redis container up and running everytime I need to bootstrap a build? I thought that I could prepare the images to upload them myself and then rerun my environments with them without the need of doing something to my database… The pipeline I was asked to build is: Github actions: that can bootstrap the image in case of an update is needed. Push the image to a private registry. Then my Kubernetes cluster could get updates and deploy them in my environments, from dev to prod. Thanks again for all the help and support. :sparkles:

I think that your issue is that 127 doesn’t work inside the container. The bootstrap process migrates the database. If you don’t want it to migrate your database, you’ll need to change the template or use a scratch database.

Thansk for your reply :slight_smile: Can you tell me how to avoid/skip a database migration, please? I thought it was with SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS: 1

The point is that I don’t understand why a database migration is happening when there is nothing to migrate because I am creating my first image for a fresh install :frowning:

Migration is a technical terms used in context of Rails. Migrations create the correct db structure basically.

Discourse can’t run if the database isn’t populated with the tables and data that it requires. It also needs to precompile assets. You’ll need to understand how those work if you’re going to try to deploy some other way.

Thanks for clarifying it for me. I thought the first DB structure could be made in the first launch of the forum.

Thanks a lot for the reply. I will continue thinking about this. It seems that may be it is not possible to prepare a pipeline like the way I need it then. :frowning:

It can, but you’d need to explicitly do that. And the easiest way to build the image is to let it migrate a scratch database.

I will try to convince my team to ask for a temporary Postgres DB during the github pipeline then, thank you so much for all the help

Unable to create web_only image for a fresh install

Product Support Self-hosting

pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman) February 19, 2021, 1:47pm 4

I can’t. I recommend that you create a scratch database that you destroy after the migration.

And when you do, you’ll need to see that all those things happen when you deploy the new image.

Topic		Replies	Views
Building the image without touching the database Self-hosting	13	2474	September 17, 2023
How to resolve Pups exec errors during Discourse bootstrap Product Support	21	791	April 24, 2025
Installing on Kubernetes Self-hosting unsupported-install	56	26553	June 9, 2026
Error when attempting install Self-hosting	7	2282	August 17, 2018
Is there a way to install Discourse without the provided scripts? Self-hosting	8	1976	March 15, 2021

Unable to create web_only image for a fresh install

Related topics