Development install on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Development

AI-generated summary

A successful development install of Discourse on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Server edition was shared by JimmyX. To overcome issues, the following adjustments were made:

  • Replaced python-software-properties with software-properties-common to resolve installation candidate errors.
  • Installed libpq-dev to resolve bundle install failures.
  • Ran mailcatcher --ip=0.0.0.0 to enable mailcatcher functionality from the host machine.
  • Set up SSH access to the Ubuntu 18.04 guest using a tutorial from linuxhint.com.

Stephen updated the title to reflect the development purpose and recategorized the discussion to Development, noting that production installs require Docker.

1

I just successfully installed Discourse into a VirtualBox instance of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Server edition. Here are the things I had to do to get it working conveniently from my host machine.

I followed these instructions for the developer advanced install.

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/DEVELOPER-ADVANCED.md

1.The instructions seem to assume an earlier version of Ubuntu in one place.

Problem:

E: Package ‘python-software-properties’ has no installation candidate

Solution:

take out “python-software-properties”

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

2. bundle install failed

To get “bundle instal” to work I needed to execute

sudo apt-get install libpq-dev

3. Getting mailcatcher to work so I could view it from the host

I had to run mailcatcher this way:

mailcatcher --ip=0.0.0.0

4. Being able to use SSH to get into the host

I found it convenient to SSH into the Ubuntu 18.04 guest so I could copy/paste. I used this tutorial to get it working.

2

Is this install intended for development purposes?

Your title doesn’t indicate it, but as production installs require docker I’ve updated the title so that others aren’t misled. I’m also recategorizing as Development as #installation is exclusively for the docker install.