No luck getting my Lemmy instance up and running, is this a good place to get some help?

IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 11 points –

I'm not exactly a linux beginner but I'm far from an expert and I could use some pointers. I have a domain and a VPS through Namecheap, I chose Ubuntu 20.04 LAMP and I've tried several guides to get this working but something always goes wrong sooner or later.

My latest attempt is to follow along with this guide: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/install_docker.html

No errors until the docker-compose up -d command, then

ERROR: yaml.constructor.ConstructorError: while constructing a mapping in "./docker-compose.yml", line 26, column 12 found unhashable key in "./docker-compose.yml", line 26, column 13

which leads to image: {{ lemmy_docker_image }}

I guess I could start over with a different guide but I'm just chasing my tail at this point. Could any kind soul suggest where to go from here?

27

Did you swap out the {{ lemmy_docker_image }} for an actual image name? e.g. dessalines/lemmy:latest

Nope, but I have now, see above, thanks!

Can you edit the post title to say [Solved] or something so others know there's a solution here?

I recommend using the docker images directly. As you see, the ansible scripts are basically another abstraction layer used to build the docker containers and their configs (and has string substitutions like {{some_string}} which are not valid for docker-compose.yml). Some will disagree but I feel ansible adds unnecessary complexity to deploying lemmy containers.

Anyway, glad you figured it all out!

If you're looking to set up a server quickly and easily, check out Lemmy Easy Deploy by ubergeek77. Just change the host name to your domain name in the config file and you're good to go.

If you're trying to access your home server from the internet, I recommend a cloudflare tunnel. Let me know if you need assistance! My dms are open

Is it possible to get this inside of Portainer?

Yes, since Easy Deploy deploys using the docker container, lemmy will show up as a stack in portainer, just with limited editability

I kept getting an error about lemmy ui has been moved. But I could make it with ./deploy.sh -w 0.18 -f

I skimmed the guide you sent and the top says that the portions in brackets are placeholders and need to be replaced with real values. If you change {{ lemmy_docker_image }} to be the name of the image to use dessalines/lemmy:0.18.0 for example, do you get further

I didn't do that because I'm apparently a moron :)

I'm trying with

dessalines/lemmy:0.18.0 dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.18.0

In this section

  # actual and only port facing any connection from outside
  # Note, change the left number if port 1236 is already in use on your system
  # You could use port 80 if you won't use a reverse proxy
  - "80:8536"

this fails with Error starting userland proxy: listen tcp4 0.0.0.0:80: bind: address already in use

I tried 8080 instead and got no errors but I wasn't able to load the Lemmy page.

I can now get the "Apache2 Ubuntu Default Page - It works!" So that's something.

In your post you said you installed Ubuntu with a LAMP stack. Do you plan on using Apache as the reverse proxy for your instance?

I found the install to be cake using the ansible playbook https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible

i see those instructions already use some of the assets from the ansible deploy.

I looked at that one and got confused about how Ansible works. Am I to run those install commands locally or on the VPS? Thanks!

Came here to say the Ansible method is much, much easier than manual with Docker and from scratch.

I was banging my head for hours fixing all kinds of errors. I finally gave up and went the Ansible method and was able to get to the Lemmy login page within 5 minutes.

OP, if you decide to go the Ansible method, you’ll need to setup a separate server and install Ansible on it. From there clone the Git repo and modify the files the instructions tell you to. Make sure the two servers can talk to each other via SSH. Lastly, run the “ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts lemmy.yml” command and your Lemmy instance should be online within a few minutes.

Honestly, my advice is to setup two temp VPS’s with Ubuntu on them. Don’t lock them down too tight and play with the Ansible deployment. Once you get a feel for how everything goes, you can redeploy the VPS’s and set them up properly with proper security.

Hi there! This sounds like you might just have a typo in your docker-compose.yml file. It might be helpful if you posted your docker-compose.yml contents here (be sure to remove any sensitive information).

Line 26 of my docker-compose.yml file is the volume block/map for letsencrypt. Did you perhaps mix tabs and spaces, or have one too many spaces in your indentations, in your yaml file? That's a no-no...

Personally, I setup my instance using the same guide as you, opting for the docker containers. There were definitely a few pitfalls to deal with.

Here you go! There shouldn't be any sensitive info in there, I haven't modified it. The command in the instructions:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible/main/templates/docker-compose.yml

obtained the file and there's no instruction to modify it prior to running docker-compose up -d which is where it fails.

Edit: Lemmy screws up the formatting. It looks fine pasted into to text area but is messed up when I post. See the above link, that's what I'm using.

Sorry I didn’t get a chance to look at this, but I’m mostly on mobile and the link doesn’t work.

For future reference you can put it in a code block and lemmy-ui should be able to render it for you.

Example code block

Dude, I've been having the exact same problem for the last few days and have been banging my head against the wall with it too. Thanks for posting this, I'm eagerly awaiting the responses you get