Rebuilding Forum (Restoring back-up works, rebuilding does not)

Product Support Self-hosting

AI-generated summary

bseed, hosting a Discourse forum on Digital Ocean, encountered issues rebuilding the instance via ./launcher rebuild app after attempting to install plugins. Even after restoring from backup and rebuilding without modifications, the forum displayed the error: “The software powering this discussion forum encountered an unexpected problem”. Ed_S advised sharing the rebuild log output and waiting at least five minutes before assuming failure. Firepup650 suggested checking /logs for errors and using /safe-mode with no_plugins to regain admin access. SDKAAA recommended disabling all plugins and re-enabling them one-by-one to isolate the problematic one. JammyDodger pointed out that the discourse-guest-gate-theme-component should not be cloned via app.yml but installed through the admin’s Customize section as a theme component. The consensus is to inspect logs, test in safe mode, and verify plugin/theme installation methods.

1

I host the forum through Digital Ocean, and it’s been ~1 year since I’ve rebuilt the instance through the terminal.

./launcher rebuild app

I was originally following the steps here (Install plugins on a self-hosted site) to add a plugin, and the rebuild instance failed. I would see this error message after restarting:

" The software powering this discussion forum encountered an unexpected problem"

I restored the forum using a back-up, and as a sanity check without modifying any code (i.e. app.yml file), I went through the rebuild app sequence again. Even then, the rebuild and start sequence would lead to the same error message above.

Thoughts on next troubleshooting steps?

Plug-Ins:

hooks:
  after_code:
    - exec:
        cd: $home/plugins
        cmd:
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-math.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-subscriptions.git
          - sudo -E -u git clone https://github.com/VaperinaDEV/discourse-guest-gate-theme-component.git
2

It’s best to share the transcript, the log, of what you got from the rebuild command in the command line.

(It’s possible you haven’t waited long enough for the services to start up. You should wait at least five minutes before concluding that the website is unreachable.)

3

/logs should have some helpful info, and /safe-mode in no_plugins mode should allow you to at least sign in (which should let you view /logs if you’re an admin)

4

did you try to disable some of the plugins?
sometimes plugins cause problems; try to disable all then enable them one by one to see which one is causing the problem.

5

You can remove this as well as it’s a theme component and should be installed in the Cutomize section of the admin area rather than in your app.yml.