i have been playing around installing Discourse over the past few days on both Layer7 & Hetzner VPS. I have had no issues installing on Layer7 and followed the ‘Install with Virtualmin’ guide, and it’s working really well. Virtualmin has also launched a new Podman module with a Discourse recipe that works but is a little bit buggy. I have tried installing it several times on the Hetzner box, but it always fails to bootstrap. I have set up a 2GB swap, and the VPS has 4 cores and 8GB of RAM. The error message is below, and I wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction. The doctor command has not really shed any light on what is going on, as far as I am able. Happy to provide logs or command outputs if required. FAILED -------------------- Pups::ExecError: cd /var/www/discourse && sudo -H -E -u discourse bash -c ' set -o errexit git fetch --tags --prune-tags --prune --force origin if [[ $(git symbolic-ref --short HEAD) == latest ]] ; then git pull else git -c advice.detachedHead=false checkout latest fi ' failed with return # Location of failure: /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/3.4.0/gems/pups-1.4.0/lib/pups/exec_command.rb:138:in 'Pups::ExecCommand#spawn' Location of failure: /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/3.4.0/gems/pups-1.4.0/lib/pups/exec_command.rb:138:in 'Pups::ExecCommand#spawn' exec failed with the params {"cd" => "$home", "tag" => "build", "hook" => "code", "cmd" => ["sudo -H -E -u discourse git clean -f", "sudo -H -E -u discourse bash -c '\n set -o errexit\n git fetch --tags --prune-tags --prune --force origin\n if [[ $(git symbolic-ref --short HEAD) == $version ]] ; then\n git pull\n else\n git -c advice.detachedHead=false checkout $version\n fi\n'", "sudo -H -E -u discourse git config user.discourse-version $version", "mkdir -p tmp", "chown discourse:www-data tmp", "mkdir -p tmp/pids", "mkdir -p tmp/sockets", "touch tmp/.gitkeep", "mkdir -p /shared/log/rails", "bash -c \"touch -a /shared/log/rails/{production,production_errors,unicorn.stdout,unicorn.stderr,sidekiq}.log\"", "bash -c \"ln -s /shared/log/rails/{production,production_errors,unicorn.stdout,unicorn.stderr,sidekiq}.log $home/log\"", "bash -c \"mkdir -p /shared/{uploads,backups}\"", "bash -c \"ln -s /shared/{uploads,backups} $home/public\"", "bash -c \"mkdir -p /shared/tmp/{backups,restores}\"", "bash -c \"ln -s /shared/tmp/{backups,restores} $home/tmp\"", "find /shared/log/rails /shared/uploads /shared/backups /shared/tmp ! \$ -user discourse -group www-data \$ -exec chown discourse:www-data {} \\+", "[ ! -d public/plugins ] || find public/plugins/ -maxdepth 1 -xtype l -delete"]} bootstrap failed with exit code 128 ** 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. Disk Doctor Output ==================== MEMORY INFORMATION ==================== RAM (MB): 8127 total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 7751 1146 318 8 6604 6604 Swap: 2047 0 2047 ==================== DISK SPACE CHECK ==================== ---------- OS Disk Space ---------- Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 75G 13G 60G 18% / ==================== DISK INFORMATION ==================== Disk /dev/sda: 76.3 GiB, 81923145728 bytes, 160006144 sectors Disk model: QEMU HARDDISK Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Disk identifier: 818C9A1D-5D5F-4F06-9432-7B4B83510711 Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sda1 528384 160006110 159477727 76G Linux filesystem /dev/sda14 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot /dev/sda15 4096 528383 524288 256M EFI System Partition table entries are not in disk order. ==================== END DISK INFORMATION ====================

The actual reason is told before that failed text. Can you fnd something strange there?

[image] apidevlab: ** FAILED TO BOOTSTRAP ** please scroll up and look for earlier error messages This should be read as “please post at least a couple of hundred lines of the log to get assistance”

we need more info. post the entire failed bootstrap code. installing on Hetzner is super easy. i use it exclusively.

[image] apidevlab: Virtualmin has also launched a new Podman module with a Discourse recipe that works but is a little bit buggy. also podman installs are unsupported so it’s not surprising that it’s buggy. you will have a difficult time getting support for this install configuration.

I have pretty much given up on it. What sort of info is needed? Like I said happy to provide logs and command-line inputs/outputs; it has me stumped even a clean install is failing. Never had it before. This NOT a Podman install it’s an ‘official’ version using the 1 line installer

[image] apidevlab: ** FAILED TO BOOTSTRAP ** please scroll up and look for earlier error messages, there may be more than one. we need the whole failed bootstrap output code, not just that last error message. just post everything that the system spits out when you attempt to build.

@Lilly Thanks, I sort of expected that. I have had enough today, so I will post full logs tomorrow, but thankyou for the info.

Fresh Install (Hetzner VPS) Failing

Product Support

Ed_S (Ed S) September 4, 2026, 5:38pm 3

This should be read as “please post at least a couple of hundred lines of the log to get assistance”

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Fresh Install (Hetzner VPS) Failing

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