Crossed 50k pageviews per month on Discourse

Yes, and Docker is a must have requirement. I don’t know if we have to ask for the swap disk (2GB) separately but that should be noted. While Discourse could probably be installed outside of a Docker container I don’t think Discourse.org or any 3rd-party service provider would touch it if we needed help and all the documentation is based on using Docker.

If they give us the machine and we have time before the migration needs to occur then inserting some learning time on the machine to try this and other things out is perfectly doable AFAIK. I have been tinkering with Docker some the last two days and while not a Docker expert or even fluent with Docker I am not sweating it as I took many notes the first time when learning to use it.

Also along that train of thought would be to see if others want to be admins for the site. Bringing them onboard in a training window would be an opportune time.

EDIT Just for this part of the answer.
Since Oregan OSL is about teaching others, the students and staff there should also be included if we want to add admins. I know they would get root access per the agreement, but I don’t recall seeing any mention of a Discourse instance running at the site.

I am not exactly sure what that means but Discourse does make many changes rather fast and I am always amazed at the list of changes with each release.

Yes.

I should have read this first :person_facepalming:

Free Hosting for Open Source v2

If you exceed our bandwidth limit (for several consecutive months) you have two options:

  1. We’ll help you move to self-hosting, either on your own server or any Docker compatible cloud (a $20/month Digital Ocean droplet should suffice).
  2. Upgrade to our Standard hosting plan at 50% off.

Not a $100/month as I noted but $50/month. Worthy of consideration if a sponsor has been thinking about this.

Still I like exploring the Oregon OSL option better since the site will eventually have to move off of Discourse.com hosting because of increasing users and needed plan.

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Yes. Let us first explore this route. It is free and probably simple. The backend we run for www.swi-prolog.org there has, AFAIK, never been down due to problems at their end. If it fails there are plenty of options for a plan B.

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I need to get a set of specs to ask for. What should I ask for?

Jan,

What is the monthly cost for option 2, the paid plan.

Perhaps a crowd sponsorship model could work – like they now do on git.

In fact perhaps the sponsorship could run via swi-prolog on git.

Dan


Adding more detail to that.

  • modern single core CPU
  • 4GB RAM as
    2 GB RAM
    2GB swap file recommended (ref)
  • 64 bit Linux compatible with Docker
  • 40 GB disk space minimum
  • Must be able to run Docker container(s)

If a second core or CPU can be added that would be nice.
If Docker is not allowed then using Oregan OSL is probably off the list of options.

As I noted this configuration may not be enough because AFAIK Oregan OSL runs machines as Virtual Machines and that would entail a performance hit, so if a machine is granted, then testing needs to be done to make sure this hardware configuration works as expected both in normal operation and during updates.

Please ask questions if you have any. Also I don’t mind doing PM (private message) if some of us have to get together (that includes people from Oregan OSL) so that we are all comfortable understanding what is needed. Be forewarned that I have never set up a Discourse site and have yet to get one running as a local machine to experiment, but making progress. (ref)

OK, I’ll hit up OSUOSL

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I never knew about Oregon OSL before this post but now knowing about it and that you have a working relationship with them it is great to have you here helping us with this. :slightly_smiling_face:


Just found out a post is limited to 32000 characters and my other Personal Notes is near the limit.

Personal Notes Extension

Discourse Forum (ref)

Set up Reply via Email Support (ref)
Multisite configuration with Docker (ref)

Statement: Jeff Atwood codinghorror co-founder Dated: 12/14/2018 (ref)

Most installations (including all Discourse official hosting) are betas, being on a release version is more conservative. New betas are released every few weeks. Full releases come, at most, every 6 months.

Statement: Arpit JalantechAPJteam Dated: 05/12/2014 (ref)

:bell: Before you switch over to the new server, review your app.yml for any optional settings such as CDN, installed plugins, and HTTPS support between the two Discourse instances. It’s easier to make sure the two instances are identical before you begin restoring the backup.

Statement: Felix Freiberger fefrei Regular Dated: 05/19/2017 (ref)

Development installs normally aren’t set up to actually send emails but use MailCatcher to simulate it. Here’s how you start it:

mailcatcher --http-ip 0.0.0.0

Rafael dos Santos Silva Falco team Dated: 05/12/20202
PostgreSQL 12 update

Installation notes for Discourse on Bash for Windows - This is old and out dated but still has useful information.

Statement: NoBugsBunny neounix Regular Dated: 05/15/2020 (ref)

This is how we plan to upgrade next month:

  1. Pick a slow traffic time on the weekend
  2. Set DNS TTL to 5 minutes (already done in our case)
  3. Create a new VPS server.
  4. Do fresh “two container” install with ngnix reverse proxy to unix socket.
  5. Confirm all is working.
  6. Take full backup of original (PG 10) production configuration.
  7. Move backup to new VPS server.
  8. Restore new VPS server (now running PG 12) with the full backup from production PG 10 setup.
  9. Change DNS.
  10. Confirm all is well and then destroy original VPS server.

For us, this is the “lowest risk of an error” way to go with the least amount of downtime.


A nice way to see what others find important with Discourse is to view the list of topics sorted by number of views descending. (ref) What is surprising about the list is that many of the top topics at the top of the list are significant to learning how or self-host or or what others do when self-hosting.


GitHub/Discourse (ref)

Admin Quick Start Guide (ref) - There are several important links for other things you might eventually want to set up!!!

Recommended Email Providers for Discourse (ref)

We strongly recommend using a dedicated email service. Email server setup and maintenance is very difficult even for experienced system administrators, and getting any part of the complex required email setup wrong means your email won’t be delivered, or worse, delivered erratically.


blog.discourse.org (ref)

Discourse as Your First Rails App (ref)
public exploit bounty program at Hacker One


Discourse API Documentation
Setting up webhooks
How to reverse engineer the Discourse API

PostgreSQL documentation
pgAdmin - the most popular and feature rich Open Source administration and development platform for PostgreSQL.

Routine Database Maintenance Tasks (ref)


Microsoft WSL (ref)
Microsoft WSL GitHub (ref)
Microsoft WSL GitHub Issues (ref)

Issue #144 - rbenv stuck on installing ruby (ref) - When installing Ruby on WSL 1 expect to wait a half hour or more before the next message appears. Even checking if the processes was running using task manager it appeared to not be doing anything. Just be patient.

 Installing Ruby 2.7.1 ...

Downloading ruby-2.7.1.tar.bz2...
-> https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.7/ruby-2.7.1.tar.bz2
Installing ruby-2.7.1...
<Long wait time here>
Installed ruby-2.7.1 to /home/eric/.rbenv/versions/2.7.1

DockerHub

pgadmin4 (ref) - a web based administration tool for the PostgreSQL database.


What we see now as admins with Discourse.com as hosting provider/support

image

and what inspecting the HMTL revels

<meta name="generator" content="Discourse 2.5.0.beta4 - https://github.com/discourse/discourse version 4601833e4ed98aaaaf90c0ddab2bfebfae42db7c">

commit: PERF: ensure we run full GC on contexts · discourse/discourse@4601833 · GitHub

What we will see when self-hosting

image

and what inspecting the HMTL revels

<meta name="generator" content="Discourse 2.5.0.beta4 - https://github.com/discourse/discourse version 8149bfbaf1545c99764647bc40b53e32f7896550">

commit: FEATURE: Filter settings by plugin (#9692) · discourse/discourse@8149bfb · GitHub


Things Discouse will probably never do:

  1. hierarchical or nested conversation threading (ref 1) (ref 2) - Discourse uses linear or flat conversation threading. Discourse topics can be split into other topics. (ref)

What is randomart produced by ssh-keygen?

Hash Visualization: a New Technique to improve Real-World Security (pdf)

the SWI-Prolog website runs from a pair of machines, one provided by VNU in Amsterdam, and one provided by OSUOSL in Corvallis, Oregon. They’re fronted by CDN services provided by Fastly.
Yay to those three institutions for providing that stuff, and yay to Richard Siddall who keeps it running!.

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email off to OSUOSL

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@anniepoo

Ran across this and saw some useful ideas you could leverage with your training classes.

The title sounds wrong but many of the ideas are correct.

Discourse as a Virtual Conference Platform

Still haven’t heard from OSUOSL - will ping them again in a bit.

Thanks.

I have no worries as I am guessing we have a few months before we need to make a change and since I have a working developer version of Discourse running on Windows 10 there is more than enough to learn. Still need to bring up a production Docker version but as that needs a mail server and host name to bring up correctly, will wait for a production environment before attempting that.

There is also development version done in Docker which I might try. :slightly_smiling_face:

OSUOSL has indeed gotten back to me, it got lost in my email filters.

So we’re back with you generous folks at OSUOSL begging for a second server.
(Annie makes big puppy dog eyes). Is there any way we can get one?

Yes of course!

They want clarification about this “4GB RAM as 2GB RAM”

  • modern single core CPU
  • 4GB RAM as
    2 GB RAM
    2GB swap file recommended (ref)
  • 64 bit Linux compatible with Docker
  • 40 GB disk space minimum
  • Must be able to run Docker container(s)

You should be able to run all of this on a VM without any major performance
hits. I think this would be a good fit on our newer OpenStack VM platform
which will allow you to have a web console to the VM if needed. What Operating
system and version would you prefer? Do you want us to spin the VM for you or
get you web console access so you can do it yourself?

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If you get back to me with the clarifications I’ll get an email off to OSUOSL quick.

I knew the memory specifics might get me a bite back but I like that they bite back as it shows they are serious.

Let me run this over to the Discourse form and get back.

I must say this project is turning out to be a pleasure as I am getting to meet lots of new and helpful people. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks. And yes, the Prolog community is full of wonderful folks.

Yes the Prolog community is great but the group also included those at Discourse and OSU OSL and other Discourse forums I joined.

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Just a public shout out to the folks who maintain our infrastructure -

  • Eric GT - able moderator of the Discourse
  • Richard Siddall - able wrangler of the servers
  • Fastly - Supplies us with the equivalent of several hundred dollars of CDN every month
  • OSUOSL - Supplies us with the US server, which is why we don’t die all the time like we used to
  • VU - Supplies us with the EU server, which is beefy and lets us run SWISH
  • DataChemist, who bought Jan a spiffy new build machine.
2 Likes