Install Discourse on Ubuntu or Debian for Development

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:warning: This guide covers installation instructions in development environment. For a production guide see: Install Discourse in production with the official, supported instructions

So you want to set up Discourse on Ubuntu or Debian to hack on and develop with?

We’ll assume that you work locally and don’t have Ruby/Rails/Postgres/Redis installed on your Ubuntu or Debian system. Let’s begin!

Requirements

We suggest having at least 4 GB RAM and 2 CPU cores.

Current compatibility:

OS Compatibility
Debian 11 :white_check_mark:
Ubuntu 22.04 or later :white_check_mark:

Install Discourse Dependencies

As regular user run this script in terminal, to setup Rails development environment:-

bash <(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/discourse/install-rails/master/linux)

This will install following new packages on your system:

In case you have any of this package pre-installed and don’t want to run entire script, see the script and pick the packages you don’t have currently installed. The script is fine-tuned for Discourse, and includes all the packages required for Discourse installation.

Now that we have installed Discourse dependencies, let’s move on to install Discourse itself.

Clone Discourse

Clone the Discourse repository in ~/discourse folder:

git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse.git ~/discourse

~ indicates home folder, so Discourse source code will be available in your home folder.

Setup Database

Already completed by the install script

Create role with the same name as your Linux system username:

cd /tmp && sudo -u postgres createuser -s "$USER"

Bootstrap Discourse

Switch to your Discourse folder:

 cd ~/discourse

Install the needed gems

source ~/.bashrc
bundle install

Install the JS dependencies

yarn install

Now that you have successfully installed gems, run these commands:

bin/rails db:create 
bin/rails db:migrate
RAILS_ENV=test bin/rails db:create db:migrate

Start rails and ember server:

bin/ember-cli -u

You should now be able to navigate to http://localhost:4200 to see your local Discourse installation.

Create New Admin

To create a new admin, run the following command:

bin/rails admin:create

Follow the prompts, and a new admin account will be created.

Configure Mail

Run MailHog:

mailhog

Congratulations! You are now the admin of your own Discourse installation!

Happy hacking! And to get started with that, see Beginner’s Guide to Creating Discourse Plugins.

Last Reviewed by @blake on 2023-04-03T06:00:00Z

52 Likes
604

Running db:create gives me

bin/rails db:create
PG::InvalidParameterValue: ERROR:  new encoding (UTF8) is incompatible with the encoding of the template database (SQL_ASCII)
HINT:  Use the same encoding as in the template database, or use template0 as template.
Couldn't create 'discourse_development' database. Please check your configuration.
rails aborted!
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PG::InvalidParameterValue: ERROR:  new encoding (UTF8) is incompatible with the encoding of the template database (SQL_ASCII)
HINT:  Use the same encoding as in the template database, or use template0 as template.


Caused by:
PG::InvalidParameterValue: ERROR:  new encoding (UTF8) is incompatible with the encoding of the template database (SQL_ASCII)
HINT:  Use the same encoding as in the template database, or use template0 as template.

Tasks: TOP => db:create

What’s the problem here?

605

Hmm. So complicated, and there are many failure points. Do we have a docker version or one command installation?

1 Like
606
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