BCHK, a non-coding Discourse admin, upgraded from version 2.9.0.beta7 to beta9 and encountered site breakage, losing all customizations. Initially suspecting the Pavilion News plugin, BCHK was advised by Jay Pfaffman to check disk space and consider removing the plugin temporarily. merefield suggested checking browser console and logs for errors, noting their own setup worked fine. After sharing screenshots showing the site’s degraded appearance BCHK, and confirming no visible errors, merefield suspected other components. BCHK shared plugin details, prompting merefield to identify a console error pointing to “Guest Gate,” a deprecated plugin. BCHK admitted unfamiliarity with browser developer tools, which merefield explained. After disabling Guest Gate via the theme (not deleting it) BCHK, the site was restored BCHK. merefield clarified that Guest Gate is now a Theme Component, not a plugin, and advised migrating to the updated version Guest Gate Theme Component - theme-component - Discourse Meta. BCHK expressed gratitude and plans to upgrade less frequently to avoid future instability. Canapin reminded users to periodically run ./launcher cleanup to free disk space. The issue was resolved by replacing the deprecated plugin with its current Theme Component equivalent.
Hi - I’m a non-software coding admin for a Discourse server.
I was running Discourse Version: 2.9.0.beta7 (commit f75a99e93295655f796e63e7d1c42cf613b64117)
And also the Pavilion News plugin.
I upgraded to beta 9 last night and it broke my site.
Is there an easy way to reverse the upgrade? To go back to what I was running before the most recent upgrade?
When I saw the site was broken, I also upgraded the plugin - but nothing changed and the site has lost all the customization.
Hmmm… I contacted Jay Pfafmann and he suggested - could the issue just be one of low disk space? The forum is running, but has lost all customization:
As the previous message suggests, you’re low on disk space.
But you need to ssh in to your server and do something like this:
cd /var/discourse/
./launcher cleanup
maybe edit containers/app.yml and remove the news plugin here?
./launcher rebuild app
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘lost all customisation’.
We’ll need more information on any errors you can see, both in the browser console and in /logs
If that’s your issue, then yes, deleting a couple of the older backups will help, but you will only create new ones and fill it up again, unless you change the number in settings.
There are no error messages I’m getting. It just seems that the News Plugin is no longer functioning (and the related CSS, etc.)
do you remember when you last upgraded before this time?
Yes - in July to this version of Discourse:
Discourse Version: 2.9.0.beta7 (commit f75a99e93295655f796e63e7d1c42cf613b64117)
You seem to have other components too, be careful its not something else. Where does that menu come from?
In any case you can try removing news temporarily from your app.yml and rebuilding to see if otherwise things are restored.
what’s the URL of your site?
I just add a quick reminder of doing a ./launcher cleanup from time to time to free some disk space.
I don’t typically work from the console - only from the discourse admin interface. Where would I see that info?
Browser’s Developer Tools. All admins of self-installs should be familiar with this. Hit F12 in Firefox, for example.
Should I remove Guest Gate entirely, or just turn it off? Does it matter which approach I use?
After I do this - do I need to “reboot” or take some other action to get things to restart and reload properly?
It’s a Theme Component so just remove it from the active Theme, no need to delete it.
