[mutlisite installation] pnpn permission error during rebuild

[Padoup-Padoup]

Hello,

I am unable to upgrade/rebuild my web_only container. The rebuild seems to fail when calling multisite migrate. A fresh install (no data, just my data.yml and web_only.yml files) yields the same error (the rebuild of the data container completes without error.

Am I doing anything wrong or could it be a bug introduced in a recent upgrade?

Alternatively, how could I circumvent this error? I don’t know the internals of the script but the scripts first says that /root/ is unwriteable, creates a tmp folder then seems to crash because mkdir fails in the /root/ directory.

Many thanks!

> Seeding theme and color schemes
I, [2026-01-16T17:32:37.738763 #1]  INFO -- : > cd /var/www/discourse && sudo -E -u discourse bundle exec rake multisite:migrate
`/root` is not writable.
Bundler will use `/tmp/bundler20260116-787-ovvxnu787' as your home directory temporarily.
rake aborted!
Discourse::Utils::CommandError: pnpm -C=frontend/asset-processor node build.js (Discourse::Utils::CommandError)
 WARN  Issue while reading "/root/.npmrc". EACCES: permission denied, open '/root/.npmrc'
 WARN  Issue while reading "/root/.config/pnpm/rc". EACCES: permission denied, open '/root/.config/pnpm/rc'
 ERROR  EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/root/.local/share/pnpm/.tools/pnpm/10.28.0_tmp_901'
For help, run: pnpm help run
/var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:171:in `execute_command'
/var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:137:in `exec'
/var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:32:in `execute_command'
/var/www/discourse/lib/asset_processor.rb:27:in `build_asset_processor'
/var/www/discourse/lib/asset_processor.rb:31:in `build_production_asset_processor'
/var/www/discourse/lib/tasks/assets.rake:155:in `block in <main>'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/3.3.0/gems/rake-13.3.1/exe/rake:27:in `<top (required)>'
/usr/local/bin/bundle:25:in `load'
/usr/local/bin/bundle:25:in `<main>'
Tasks: TOP => multisite:migrate => assets:precompile:asset_processor
(See full trace by running task with --trace)


FAILED
--------------------
Pups::ExecError: cd /var/www/discourse && sudo -E -u discourse bundle exec rake multisite:migrate failed with return #<Process::Status: pid 785 exit 1>
Location of failure: /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0/gems/pups-1.4.0/lib/pups/exec_command.rb:138:in `spawn'
exec failed with the params "cd /var/www/discourse && sudo -E -u discourse bundle exec rake multisite: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.

[zogstrip]

@david / @cvx could this be related to pnpm upgrade we did recently?

[supermathie (Michael Brown)]

@Padoup-Padoup

sudo -E -u discourse bundle exec rake multisite:migrate

this should be sudo -H -E -u discourse…

(we should probably make set_home the default)

[Padoup-Padoup]

It is unbelievable to me that I received the exact answer after… 25min !

Many many thanks, the rebuild completed with success!

Indeed, my web_only.yml contained the incorrect command. I remember following one of these tutorials: (that still contain the now-incorrect command ; not sure how to edit those posts).

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[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

Yes it could, because I was in troubles when upgrade failed when wanting v10 and I had 9.something. So, I updated pnmp manually.

And yes, I’m off topic because mine isn’t multisite and OP had different issue