Hi. I’m searching for a solution that don’t make me rebuild my Discourse when I install a new plugin, which cause a long downtime. On some forum scripts (like PHPBB, FluxBB, etc…), we can install a plugin without causing a downtime. I’m also looking for a solution to set a message when the users visits my rebuilding Discourse who says that the forum is currently in maintainance (instead of the web browser error). Thanks!

It’s really not possible to install a plugin without rebuilding afaik. [image] Sir_Reyowski: I’m also looking for a solution to set a message when the users visits my rebuilding Discourse who says that the forum is currently in maintainance (instead of the web browser error). This can be done by setting up an offline page while rebuilding here is a guide: [image] Add an offline page to display when Discourse is rebuilding or starting up Sysadmins warning This guide is intended for advanced users, who are already using nginx outside the docker container. By following this guide you make your setup more complicated and will lose some speed benefits like HTTP2 if you’re not running Ubuntu 16.04 or later. Proceed with caution! When Discourse is rebuilding or starting up, your users will usually either see an error message from their browser… [image] …or a not-so-nice 502 error message from Nginx: [image] If you’re a perfectionist …

The solution is to use a two-container install. This will let you build a new image while the old one keeps running. The amount of downtime is just what it takes to shutdown the old container and start the new one.

Thanks, I will follow your solution.

A more advanced version can include a load balancer in front of the application container(s) to reduce downtime to a bare minimum right?

Yes, I’ve experimented with having HAproxy in front of two containers, so it should be possible to leave the old server running, crank up the new one, shut down the old one with no downtime. I’ve not yet gotten it working correctly, however.

Can you tell me what kind of issues you had?

I’ll need to crank it up again and document it. It’ll take a while to figure it out again. :frowning:

Sorry for necro, but this post appears high in Google and I had the same “problem”. It requires fooling around in the docker container, so I’d not recommend doing this on production if you don’t know what you are doing. Steps after sshing into your server: YOU’RE DOING UNSUPPORTED STUFF, NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND! # cd /var/discourse # ./launcher enter app # su discourse $ cd /var/www/discourse/plugins $ git clone $ exit # exit # docker restart app There is still some downtime while the container starts, but it’s much faster than a full rebuild (seconds vs minutes on the smallest DigitalOcean droplet).

Cześć! You’re most probably looking for this: [image] Benefits of running discourse in separate containers for data and web Self-hosting Per Advanced Troubleshooting with Docker, the database is actually stored outside the container(s). AFAIK the main advantage of separating containers (if you’re changing nothing else about the default install) is reducing downtime when you’re running ./launcher rebuild app. However it’s a bit outside my knowledge and not something I’ve attempted doing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more reasons to do it. [image] Move from standalone container to separate web and data containers Sysadmins As far as I can tell, this guide is lots of words around: back up create a completely new discourse instance, with more words but the same results as just running discourse_setup 2container restore Why wouldn’t you just move or copy /var/discourse/shared/standalone/{postgres,redis}* into /var/discourse/shared/data after a clean shutdown and before starting up two new containers from separate containers/*.yml files? A backup/restore seems like a really heavy-weight way to move all that data ac…

You can also sv restart unicorn Inside the container, which is a tiny bit faster than restarting the container. Also, for Some plugins you’d need to migrate the database.

How to install a plugin without rebuilding (or set a maintainance message)

Product Support

MakaryGo (Makary Gołosz) July 22, 2020, 2:34pm 10

Hello!
You’re most probably looking for this:

Topic		Replies	Views
The site is offline when installing the plugin Self-hosting	15	727	March 3, 2024
Ability to install and uninstall plugins directly from Admin GUI Feature	15	2079	September 20, 2020
Maintenance page while docker takes time to rebuilt Self-hosting	4	806	April 3, 2023
High Availability Self-hosting	8	2470	October 3, 2017
"Currenting updating forum" during rebuild Product Support	5	813	November 21, 2022

How to install a plugin without rebuilding (or set a maintainance message)

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