I followed the official Discourse guide for installing plugins on a self-hosted site (official tutorial), but it dates back to 2014, and I’m quite sure much of the information is now outdated. I also tried some of the more recent, recommended solutions shared in the discussion replies, such as mounting SSH keys via volumes and configuring SSH access during the bootstrap process. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, I still failed to clone and install plugins from my private Git repositories using SSH. If anyone has an updated, working method or best practice for using SSH keys to install Discourse plugins from private repositories, your guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Is there a way to download the plugin files directly to the server beforehand, so that during the Discourse bootstrap it doesn’t need to fetch them again from GitHub?

[image]Install plugins on a self-hosted site With the OAuth token, you can install your plugin in the same way as a public repo, and you don’t need to create a SSH key. This is still the valid approach I use it all the time.

[image] copymonopoly: Is there a way to download the plugin files directly to the server beforehand You can probably clone the files directly into /plugins and then run the necessary migrations, but then you may not receive updates for the plugins.

Thanks! But the reason I prefer using SSH is because OAuth tokens don’t allow separating read and write permissions — they always come with more access than necessary. With SSH, I can generate a read-only deploy key, which is more secure and aligns better with the principle of least privilege.

[image] NateDhaliwal: You can probably clone the files directly into /plugins and then run the necessary migrations, but then you may not receive updates for the plugins. Thanks for the suggestion! I actually tried cloning the plugin directly into /var/www/discourse/plugins, but it didn’t work — even when I mounted the plugin folder from the host to that path inside the container. It seems that during bootstrap, Discourse expects to fetch plugins via Git, and manually placing the plugin files doesn’t bypass that step. If you’ve had success with this method, I’d love to hear more details.

IIRC there are problems if you clone directly (I think this), that’s why using the tokens to clone are the recommended way. But I think you may want to give this a shot, if you want to use SSH keys: [image]Install plugins on a self-hosted site We strongly advise you to use OAuth tokens for plugins in private repositories. However, if you cannot, see below. SSH Key Private Install Steps Assuming that your private git repo is hosted on GitHub, you need to add your server’s user public SSH key to GitHub repo Deploy keys (https://github.com/SecretOrg/secret-plugin/settings/keys). Modify app.yml file as shown in below example: run: - exec: echo "Beginning of custom commands" - exec: cd /var/www/discourse && sudo -u discourse bundle install --deployment --without test --without development - exec: echo "Host github.com\n\tStrictHostKeyChecking no\n" >> /user/.ssh/config - file: path: /user/.ssh/id_rsa chmod: 600 contents: | -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- MIIEogIBAAKCAQEArCQG213utzqE5YVjTVF5exGRCkE9OuM7LCp/FOuPdoHrFUXk .... etc .... -----END RSA PRIVATE KEY----- - file: path: /user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub chmod: 600 contents: ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAklOUpkDHrfHY17SbrmTIpNLTGK9Tj .... etc .... user@discourse - exec: cd $home/plugins && git clone git@github.com:SecretOrg/secret-plugin.git - exec: cd $home && sudo -E -u discourse bundle exec rake db:migrate - exec: cd $home && rm -fr tmp/cache - exec: cd $home && sudo -E -u discourse bundle exec rake assets:precompile - exec: rm /user/.ssh/id_rsa - exec: rm /user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub - exec: echo "End of custom commands" Rebuild the container: cd /var/discourse ./launcher rebuild app Your private plugin should be installed on your Discourse instance.

Thanks, but I’ve already tried the method described in the official 2014 guide you linked — and I can confirm that it no longer works for accessing private repositories via SSH keys during bootstrap. I also tried the newer approach mentioned in one of the replies (mounting the SSH key into the container and configuring core.sshCommand in after_code), but unfortunately, that also failed in my case. Discourse still throws an SSH permission error when trying to clone the private plugin. If there’s a currently working and reliable way to use a private repo with SSH in a production setup, I’d really appreciate more up-to-date guidance.

You could just clone it locally and either mount it in the plugins directory or cp it from a temporary mount into the plugins directory. You used to be able to get a github url that had credentials embedded in the url. I’ve done that before.

Comment installer des plugins Discourse hébergés dans des dépôts privés à l'aide d'une clé SSH ?

Assistance produit Installation

merefield (Robert) Juillet 25, 2025, 5:54 3

C’est toujours l’approche valide

Je l’utilise tout le temps.

Sujet		Réponses	Vues
Private repo on Github Development	1	1771	Septembre 9, 2019
Install plugins on a self-hosted site Self-Hosting how-to	42	266147	Mars 10, 2026
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Install plugin from private Git repository? Development	5	1555	Mars 11, 2019
Install plugins without direct access to github Product Support unsupported-install	12	1518	Mars 18, 2019

Comment installer des plugins Discourse hébergés dans des dépôts privés à l'aide d'une clé SSH ?

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