User khikhan successfully installed Discourse on a DigitalOcean droplet (IP: 159.65.83.150, domain: forum.jcdesigngroup.xyz) using ./discourse-setup, but initially couldn’t access the forum via domain or IP despite ports 80/443 being active. pfaffman confirmed the domain resolved correctly and asked for docker ps output and nginx logs — the latter was missing, indicating possible early-stage boot issues. Later, khikhan noted that the domain jcdesigngroup.xyz itself wasn’t hosting a site, causing SSL certificate issuance to fail due to missing CAA records; after updating nameservers and rebuilding the app, the forum became accessible. pfaffman speculated that 1GB RAM might be insufficient, as the Rails app took unusually long to boot (initially returning 502). However, Canapin countered that 1GB is still viable, noting only a brief wait is needed between nginx and Rails startup. khikhan is now troubleshooting SMTP setup.
I have a domain pointng to my DIgitalOcean droplet, the installation completed successfully using the repo cloned from git. But i can’t find the forum on my domain, neither on the IP address. While the server ports 80 and 443 are listening, which confirms that the service is running.
What is the IP of the server and the domain of the site?
Did you run discourse-setup as described in the standard install?
Domain: forum.jcdesigngroup.xyz
IP: 159.65.83.150
yes i used the ./discourse-setup script, answered the questions and it completed successfully. I am able to view the docker container that is running discourse, but not accessible from the browser.
Can you ssh to that server at 159.65.83.150? I confirm that’s the address that your domain resolves to.
discourse-setup tests that the domain resolves, so I’m not quite sure what the issue might be.
What is the output of
docker ps
and
tail /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log/nginx/access.log
It’s up now. It looks like it took an insanely long time for the server to start up. I looked a couple hours ago and it was a 502 error, suggesting that nginx was working but that Rails hadn’t fully booted up yet.
I’m wondering if 1GB isn’t a very good idea anymore.
No, actually the reason was that the domain name jcdesigngroup.xyz was not running a website and i was using the subdomain, when discourse tried to get SSL certificates for it, it was getting an error that the domain jcdesigngroup.xyz has no valid CAA, i configured the nameservers for it also. And after rebuilding the app, i got it running. I am having an issue with the SMTP server, but i hope it will get resolved soon.
No issue with low-specs (1 GB Ram) oracle free servers though. Between nginx starting up and the forum being actually running, you just have to wait a few seconds.
