Self hosting for free (with caveats!) with Oracle Cloud

Installation Hosting
42

@Lopro - Did you ever get your setup working with Oracle mail?

Running discourse doctor is giving:

==================== MAIL TEST ====================
For a robust test, get an address from http://www.mail-tester.com/
Or just send a test message to yourself.
Email address for mail test? ('n' to skip) [<snip>@gmail.com]: test-7vs1tko5p@srv1.mail-tester.com
Sending mail to test-7vs1tko5p@srv1.mail-tester.com. . .
Testing sending to test-7vs1tko5p@srv1.mail-tester.com using smtp.email.uk-london-1.oci.oraclecloud.com:587.
SMTP server connection successful.
Sending to test-7vs1tko5p@srv1.mail-tester.com. . .
Sending mail failed.
Replacing: SMTP_PASSWORD
Replacing: LETSENCRYPT_ACCOUNT_EMAIL
Replacing: DEVELOPER_EMAILS
Replacing: DISCOURSE_DB_PASSWORD
Replacing: Sending mail to

==================== DONE! ====================
1 Like
43

No, I didn’t. And I dropped it after I found out it was a paid part of the free tier.

2 Likes
44

I set up my forum with Mailjet, they have a Free plan.
6,000 emails per month - 200 emails per day, not bad for starters.

5 Likes
45

As the original tutorial for hosting Discourse on Oracle Cloud is a bit outdated, and uses some paid services, I decided to remake it while sticking purely to 100% free services.

Here it is:

If it helps you in any way, or if I should change anything, feel free to let me know. Thanks!

8 Likes
46

Great. Good. Filler.

2 Likes
47

@Hector, maybe you can put this link in your the first post? May help newcomers :slight_smile:

3 Likes
48

The guide is useful; can I however do it without providing any credit card information?

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49

I don’t think so. They do this to prevent abuse of their free service.

3 Likes
50

No, I don’t think so. It’s put in place so that people don’t make multiple accounts and take advantage of the free resources.

1 Like
51

I did that but I still keep getting the same error, once I get home I’ll post a screenshot.

52

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image3506×922 177 KB

@canapin

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53

any ideas on what I should do @merefield

54

So what is the error?

55

403, give me a moment to try and set it up

56

Hostname for your Discourse? [discourse.example.com]: somethingawesome.com

Checking your domain name . . .
WARNING: Port 443 of computer does not appear to be accessible using hostname: somethingawesome.com
WARNING: Connection to http://somethingawesome.com (port 80) also fails.

This suggests that somethingawesome.com resolves to some IP address that does not reach this
machine where you are installing discourse.

The first thing to do is confirm that somethingawesome.com resolves to the IP address of this server.
You usually do this at the same place you purchased the domain.

If you are sure that the IP address resolves correctly, it could be a firewall issue.
A web search for “open ports YOUR CLOUD SERVICE” might help.

This tool is designed only for the most standard installations. If you cannot resolve
the issue above, you will need to edit containers/app.yml yourself and then type

./launcher rebuild app

root@discourse-forum:/var/discourse#

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image3552×970 182 KB

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image2015×90 10.4 KB

*for information, somethingawesome was just a placeholder as i dont want to link my personal site

57

@RGJ look above for screenshots

58

Which OS did you install on your server? Ubuntu?

1 Like
59

Yes indeed I have downloaded it on Ubuntu

60

What does sudo iptables -S output?

1 Like
61

Could this be a free option for automatic Discourse backup and storage ?