So you want to set up Discourse on Ubuntu to hack on and develop with?
We'll assume that you don't have Ruby/Rails/Postgre/Redis installed on your Ubuntu system. Let's begin!
Although this guide assumes that you are using Ubuntu, but the set-up instructions will work fine for any Debian based distribution.
(If you want to install Discourse for production use, see our install guide)
Install Discourse Dependencies
As regular user run this script in terminal, to setup Rails development environment:
bash <(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/techAPJ/install-rails/master/linux)
This will install following new packages on your system:
Install Phantomjs:
For 32 bit macine:
cd /usr/local/share
sudo wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-i686.tar.bz2
sudo tar xvf phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-i686.tar.bz2
sudo rm phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-i686.tar.bz2
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-i686/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/phantomjs
cd
For 64 bit machine:
cd /usr/local/share
sudo wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo tar xvf phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo rm phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
sudo ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/phantomjs
cd
In case you have any of this package pre-installed and don't want to run entire script, see the script and pick the packages you don't have currently installed. The script is fine-tuned for Discourse, and includes all the packages required for Discourse installation.
Now that we have installed Discourse dependencies, let's move on to install Discourse itself.
Clone Discourse
Clone the Discourse repository (or your fork) in ~/discourse folder:
git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse.git ~/discourse
Setup Database
Open psql prompt as postgre user
sudo -u postgres psql postgres
Create role with the same name as your ubuntu system username with discourse as password:
CREATE ROLE techapj WITH LOGIN ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'discourse' CREATEDB SUPERUSER;
In the above command, I named the role as techapj, this means that my ubuntu system username is techapj. (It is necessary for role name to be same as system username, otherwise migrations will not run)
Check that you have successfully created role:
\du
Create discourse_development and discourse_test database:
CREATE DATABASE discourse_development WITH OWNER techapj ENCODING 'UTF8' TEMPLATE template0;
CREATE DATABASE discourse_test WITH OWNER techapj ENCODING 'UTF8' TEMPLATE template0;
Exit psql prompt by pressing ctrld
Now access psql prompt in discourse_development database as techapj (your username) user:
psql -d discourse_development -U techapj -h localhost
When prompted for password, provide the password which you set at the time of creating role, if you followed the guide as is, the password is discourse
Run following commands, separately:
CREATE EXTENSION pg_trgm;
CREATE EXTENSION hstore;
Exit psql prompt by pressing ctrld
Now access psql prompt in discourse_test database as techapj (your username) user:
psql -d discourse_test -U techapj -h localhost
When prompted for password, provide the password which you set at the time of creating role, if you followed the guide as is, the password is discourse
Run following commands, separately:
CREATE EXTENSION pg_trgm;
CREATE EXTENSION hstore;
Exit psql prompt by pressing ctrld
You have set-up the database successfully!
Bootstrap Discourse
Switch to your Discourse folder:
cd ~/discourse
Install the needed gems
source ~/.bashrc
bundle install
Now that you have successfully configured database connection, run this command:
bundle exec rake db:migrate db:test:prepare db:seed_fu
Now, try running the specs:
bundle exec rake autospec
Start rails server: (to have it available only on localhost)
bundle exec rails server
or use this command to have it listening on all interfaces and available remotely
bundle exec rails server --binding=0.0.0.0
You should now be able to connect to discourse app on http://localhost:3000 - try it out!
Create New Admin
To create a new admin, run the following commands:
RAILS_ENV=development
bundle exec rake admin:create
Just enter your input as suggested, you can create an admin account.
Configure Mail
Run MailCatcher:
mailcatcher --http-ip 0.0.0.0
Congratulations! You are now the admin of your own Discourse installation!
Happy hacking! And to get started with that, see Beginner’s Guide to Creating Discourse Plugins.
