Serve Discourse from a subfolder (path prefix) instead of a subdomain

Documentation Self-Hosting
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How to edit nginx/discourse.conf

I assume any changes to discourse.conf inside the container get reverted by doing a rebuild anyway.

To keep changes you must some-how add them to your container configuration - e.g. web_only.yml:

# […]
## Remember, this is YAML syntax - you can only have one block with a name
run:
  - exec: echo "Beginning of custom commands"
# […]
  - replace:
      filename: /etc/nginx/conf.d/discourse.conf
      from: $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for
      to: $http_x_real_ip
      global: true
# […]

How to debug a sub-folder Discourse install

In a Discourse sub-folder install a call to Discourse goes like this:
example.org/forum → [External proxy for example.org] → /path-to-discourse/discourse/shared/web-only/nginx.http.sock → [Nginx in Discourse web-container]

So if there is an error, we must first locate it:

  • External proxy
  • Nginx in Discourse container
  • Discourse itself

External proxy

  • Call it in a browser and check result.
  • Check error logs of external proxy.

Nginx in Discourse container

  1. SSH into your webserver.
  2. Directly connect to socket via curl.
  3. Debug curl output and logs of Nginx in Discourse

Important: use http url – and not https.

curl -I --unix-socket /path-to-discourse/discourse/shared/web-only/nginx.http.sock http://www.example.org/forum/

If this works, try a real call like:

curl --unix-socket /path-to-discourse/discourse/shared/web-only/nginx.http.sock \
-H "user-agent: Chrome/88.0.4324.182" \
-H "Accept-Encoding: gzip" \
http://www.example.org/forum/t/test-thread/12345 --output test-encoded.html.gz
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