Ionos XL VPS Ubuntu Plesk. With apps eg Wordpress. Also using Redis. So need to use same Redis install on same server for Discourse. Seems to be an issue.
Docker Install.
Can not build. Error Redis can not connect. Yes did every conceivable variation in app.yml & redis.config & nginx & apache. 1 week with Deepseek, Chatgpt, Gemini, Grok, nobody on earth can solve this.
Domain & Hosting & DNS is setup in Plesk, Ionos account area for Firewall. Everything else done in Bash.
Install procedure notes to myself : Discourse install on Plesk Ubuntu with Docker
app.yml: app.yml
redis.config: redis.config
Discourse location: root@determined-ptolemy:/var/www/vhosts/make.ooo/forum.make.ooo/discourse_docker#
Build error:
< 112:M 15 Dec 2025 15:23:12.908 * DB saved on disk
112:M 15 Dec 2025 15:23:12.908 # Redis is now ready to exit, bye bye…
FAILED
Pups::ExecError: cd /var/www/discourse && su discourse -c ‘bundle exec rake db:migrate’ failed with return #<Process::Status: pid 4484 exit 1>
Location of failure: /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0/gems/pups-1.3.0/lib/pups/exec_command.rb:131:in `spawn’
exec failed with the params {“cd”=>“$home”, “tag”=>“migrate”, “hook”=>“db_migrate”, “cmd”=>[“su discourse -c ‘bundle exec rake db:migrate’”]}
bootstrap failed with exit code 1
** FAILED TO BOOTSTRAP ** please scroll up and look for earlier error messages, there may be more than one.
./discourse-doctor may help diagnose the problem.
d1f6f36479328f22c8e65012eaf015046ecf28a07f0675911fdf6661704d2581
root@determined-ptolemy:/var/www/vhosts/make.ooo/forum.make.ooo/discourse_docker# />
Yes, it is very difficult to configure Discourse to work with Plesk. You need to understand a lot about Discourse, Docker, and Plesk. I’ve done it before, but Plesk regularly broke the configuration since you’re essentially working against what it’s designed to do.
I’d start with Discourse on its own server to see how that works and then try to get it to work with Plesk if that’s something that you think will be lots of fun.
AI won’t be much help since you’re trying to do stuff that’s pretty much not documented at all.
Then why are you asking?
I can probably do it, but it would take me 1-5 hours at $300/hour. We’d likely both be unhappy with the process.
Well no need to be a dick about it dude. I just thought maybe someone has figured it out since this is a common setup for web hosting. It would be great if they would say Discourse will not work with Plesk environment.
Sorry. Not trying to be a dick, just saying that it’s really hard, even for someone who’s spent almost ten years installing Discourse for people.
Basically saying, yeah, it might not be completely impossible, but it might as well be.
The install docs say pretty clearly that the only supported way to do it is on a VM with nothing else running. There are some docs about running with a pretty vanilla reverse proxy, but you still need to know a fair about about reverse proxies and Discourse to make those work.