Discourse on a Raspberry Pi | Blog

[Falco]

@pi88

I got a use case where my client machine is connected to some VPN and have no access to internet. The only way for me to access the forum is through the local network ip address.

Maybe hardcode that IP in your local hosts file?

[pi88]

Thanks Falco! I will check that out.

[pi88]

@Falco

@pi88

I got a use case where my client machine is connected to some VPN and have no access to internet. The only way for me to access the forum is through the local network ip address.

Maybe hardcode that IP in your local hosts file?

I tried hardcode the IP in my client’s hosts file, and the browser always redirect me to the external connection.
Is it possible to provide more than one domain name to the DISCOURSE_HOSTNAME?
Do i need to set DISCOURSE_FORCE_HTTPS: to false to allow local connection? I got this from one of your article.

[bekircem]

I am trying to install Discourse on my Raspberry Pi 4 using Dietpi OS and some apps working with Nginx like Nextcloud. I am trying to use Cloudflared service as a tunnel but after the Discourse installation is complete I can’t access Discourse site and i got 502 bad gateway error.

What kind of customization is required on Nginx? Which port should we use?

I applied this guide but without success

Run other websites on the same machine as Discourse

@pfaffman edited this heavily 2022.02.24. Blame me if it’s broken. If you want to run other websites on the same machine as Discourse, you need to set up an extra NGINX or HAProxy proxy in front of the Docker container. NOTE: This is for advanced admins This guide assumes you already have Discourse working - if you don’t, it may be hard to tell whether or not the configuration is working. You cannot use ./discourse-setup to set up Discourse if another server is using port 80 or 443. You will …

[Falco]

My guide assumes that Discourse is the only app on the Pi, and then runs the tunnel exposing the port 80 that is assigned to the Discourse container.

Running multiple apps that share a reverse proxy, while possible, is a more advanced setup and out of the scope of this guide.

[pi88]

I got this working by setting DISCOURSE_BACKUP_HOSTNAME to machinename.local and DISCOURSE_FORCE_HTTPS to false. Now i can access with my domain name and local network domain name.

[merefield (Robert)]

Well done. Maybe should be a How To in #howto:admins ?

[pi88]

Thanks @merefield. Sure!
There is one problem when using a backup hostname, the images doesn’t display properly.
If the post’s images created with main hostname and when access with the backup hostname, the images will be missing. This also happens in vice-versa.

[merefield (Robert)]

What happens when you rebake a Post? (Rebuild HTML)

Perhaps you will need to stick to one access address.

[pi88]

Yeah, Rebuild HTML works. But the vpn access is broken because it depends on the local address (backup hostname).

[pi88]

i guess there is no solution to this…

Need relative URLs for uploaded images

Just to add a voice and to agree with @sam, we’ve already had some switcheroos with our domains and relative URLs is most certainly needed.

[Kosmas_Giannoutakis]

Will this work on an armv7l?

[Falco]

No it won’t. I did try, but there are some missing packages on the 32 bit ARM debian repositories that made it a no go.

[th21]

The demo site link seems dead

[Falco]

Same as before, I moved houses again. Will plug it back on as soon as I can find it.

[eh223]

now that is the kind of infrastructure bug i like to deal with

looking forward to giving this a whirl

hope you’re settling in well to your new place @Falco

[Falco]

@th21 it’s now back up.

@eh223 thanks

[merefield (Robert)]

So I recently got one of these:

And decided to get the development install running, which tbh required a significantly manual effort as the scripted solutions don’t work at present, but

Thanks to everyone who’s made this possible, very cool indeed!

[KaraokeAmerica (Steve)]

@merefield

And decided to get the development install running, which tbh required a significantly manual effort as the scripted solutions don’t work at present

What “scripted solutions” work on ANY Pi? I have a few Pi4’s that would like to try this one, but not being a Linux guru, I don’t have the knowledge to deal with manual “dependencies”.

I do have a recursive PiHole running on my network though which I think will allow me to at least deal with the doman name issue…maybe.

[sunjam (james.network)]

Been very happy with mine. I would recommend

• 8gb Raspberry Pi since mine is regularly hitting 4gb
• SSD disk. Microsd is too slow.