The file appears to be empty.
then you are not in the right directory, navigate to the right one first, or include the path 
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Ah yes, containers! cheers
Is the DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT the incoming or outgoing?
Incoming isnt it. Brain is a little melted…
Do I just edit the app.yml file then exit and it will prompt to save?
then rebuild?
Nope, smtp is outgoing isn’t it.
Time for a break and a fresh head…
Hi. Can I ask please if I have a single instance of Discourse and use groups to distinguish the physical groups I want to serve, how easy would it be to export those groups individually and retain state to their own specific instance of Discourse where they would live happily together forever? 
I’m not sure I understand your question. Are you suggesting exporting parts of your forum, and then importing those into another forum? I don’t think there’s any way to do that right now except by just copying your site and then removing what you don’t want from the copy.
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There is a rake task. It’s a little clunky (I’m not sure what about user passwords, for example?) but I think it works.
That gets the categories, which are the collections of topics that you want. I think it also pulls over the users who have created posts. I’m not sure about other users that have not created posts.
I don’t really recommend it, but if one group got really big and wanted to spilt off you might do it this way, or you might just restore the whole database and delete the categories you don’t want. It’s hard to tell which would be easier without seeing the actual data, which do not exist.
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Thank you guys. What I’m trying to reference here is the requirement I expressed at the beginning of this thread. A very high number of autonomous, independent and on the whole private groups plus an overarching national open forum.
Having literally only just heard about Discourse less than 24hrs before writing this I was trying to see how my ideas might be serviced by it. I’m still a bit freaked out at how well your software fits the bill. I didn’t think what I wanted existed!
Constraints quickly became clear in terms of what the overall software architecture might look like. Your responses confirmed that the functionality I was hoping for might best be catered for by a multisite model. @pfaffman Jay you added that this would need ‘a bunch of expertise or money’. Having studied networked computing to degree level (albeit a long time ago) I decided to commit to the bunch of expertise route.
I hope this give a better idea of the system I’m building.
To clarify the last question I asked. Considering that I’m at the very beginning of quite a complex task and also still finding my feet. Should I build this on one instance that contains my smaller groups. As it grows and I’m understanding the complexities better do I then make a value judgement on whether to split the groups out to their own instances? Or, do I put smaller groups in their own instance of Discourse from the beginning? I’m wondering if there’s a tradeoff between greater control and flexibility of groups in their own instances and the administrative overhead of this compared to all groups in one installation?
Basically asking if I should start with a multisite model or, for simplicity start with one and consider exporting groups to their own install later. It sounds like the former is the sensible way?
I think I would probably l go with a multisite setup and create a separate subdomain with its own Discourse for each community. A single instance will be enough to start, and when you have more users than a single instance can handle, you’d have enough money coming in that it wouldn’t be a problem.
The setup described at Setup Multisite Configuration with Let's Encrypt and no Reverse Proxy is actually pretty simple. I’d probably add databases some way other than having launcher do it, especially if I were adding them often, but it should be good enough to get you started.
And if you want each community to be its own world, then you may not need or want a single authentication source, so maybe what you want is easier than I’d first thought.
It’s unclear if you’re planning to start with 20 sites or 2,000. If it’s 20, then the above solution is good enough; if it’s 2,000, you’ll likely want something more sophisticated.