Rebuild app not working on Ubuntu 16.04

Product Support

AI-generated summary

Ninad is experiencing issues rebuilding their Discourse forum on an old Ubuntu 16.04 server after a crash. The server’s Docker version (max 19.x via official repo) is below Discourse’s minimum requirement (20.0.10), so they manually installed Docker 20, which installed successfully but failed during ./launcher rebuild app. They cannot upgrade Ubuntu due to other critical applications running on the same system and wish to preserve existing forum data. Heliosurge advises that Ubuntu 16.04 itself is too outdated — even with newer Docker, other dependencies may be obsolete or incompatible. They recommend setting up a fresh server with a modern OS, installing Discourse there, and restoring a backup of the existing forum. If assistance is needed migrating the old setup, they suggest posting in Marketplace.

1

Hello,

We have an old Ubuntu server - 16.04 that we host our forum.
Recently the server crashed and discourse stopped. When we tried to do ./launcher restart or ./launcher rebuild app, we got the message that minimum version of docker supported is 20.0.10.
However, official Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) has only upto docker version 19 in the official docker repository.
So we manually downloaded a docker version 20 from a seperate branch that works with Ubuntu 16.04. The docker installed fine.
However, when we tried to do a rebuild app, we got some failure messages in the installation and the installation was not successful.

We do not want to lose the posts and data from the existing forum. We also do not have an option of upgradig Ubuntu as it has other applications running in parallel which we cannot risk disrupting.

How can we get the discourse forum to rebuild successfully and not lose existing data, given the above situation?

2

Your Ubuntu server is too old while you may have an up-to-date docker. You likely have other dependencies that are also outdated/obsolete

You will want to see about refreshing a new server and new install of discourse. Then transfer restore a backup of your discourse.

You may need to consider posting in Marketplace if you need assistance accomplishing this feat with your current install being very out of date.