Install from Scratch - Lemmy Documentation
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I’m trying this on Ubuntu 22.04 Rust’s cargo install seems to keep creating permission problems between what I have to install, compile and what gets published in the cargo “registry”, which causes issues at runtime when I run as lemmy:lemmy through systemctl.

If I run: cargo install lemmy_server --target-dir /usr/bin/ --locked --features embed-pictrs as a non-root user, I get permission denied issues with /usr/bin/.future-incompat-report.json and /usr/bin/release

If I run the build as a root user, and then manually copy the binaries to /usr/bin and chmod them to lemmy:lemmy, then try to run as lemmy:lemmy, it appears the binary is trying to access some “registry” files in /root/.cargo/registry (for which of course it does not have permissions.)

How do I fix this?

  • @KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.mlOP
    1•11 months ago

    Well, you are the only person really responding to me here with helpful information.

    So if you are a bot, I welcome our new robot overlords.

    I’m still trying to get the lemmy-ui installed. I’ll check your links. Looks like they updated the join-lemmy.org page.

    I owe you a beer, or a pint of 10w-40.

    • RoundSparrow
      1•11 months ago

      ha.

      I didn’t have much trouble with lemmu-ui, I ended up following instructions that put it at /var/lib/lemmy-ui on Ubuntu 22.04 server.

      I already had nginx running for a different domain name on that server, so that confused me for a while. As the SSL certification instructions assume you have an empty nginx server, it won’t prompt you for domain names if you already have some defined. Once I figured that out, the instructions worked fine.

      1. I moved all my live site config files out of /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

      2. ran the certbot certonly --nginx command from the 'From Scratch" instructions, which now prompted me for domain names interactively.

      3. put back my previous sites-enabled files I removed in step 1.

      4. Then the template in the ‘From Scratch’ instructions worked fine after the sed commands to modify it: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible/main/templates/nginx.conf

      Are you stuck on updating NodeJS on your server? I already had Node apps on my server, so I followed my standard setup for node. I’m running lemmy-ui on Node.js v19.4.0, I think it probably wold work on version 20.x too. My npm --version says 9.3.1 and my yarn --version says 1.22.19

      • @KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.mlOP
        0•11 months ago

        Thanks @RoundSparrow

        I am able to bring things up and I can create an admin user by visiting the /setup URL.

        Problem is, after I create my admin user, the /setup URL appears to still be active.

        Is there some step I am missing to disable this /setup page after I have created my admin user?

        • RoundSparrow
          0•11 months ago

          There are security/data-exposure issues with this that I raised on Github… https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3060 (I’m RocketDerp)

          My testing shows that visiting /setup on Lemmy isn’t restricted. it behaves differently if you are logged-in or not logged-in. If not logged-in, it presents a form to create an admin user. If logged-in (even as a normal non-admin user) it shows the site configuration.

          Since /setup has to be accessible to someone not logged-in, the whole design is a race condition for some script-kiddie to admin-create wen installing on a public remote server. The admin accounts should probably be managed from Linux shell and not from lemmy-ui

          • @KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.mlOP
            0•11 months ago

            Ok, thanks for confirming that I am not entirely insane.

            1 - I visited other lemmy instances and saw that the /setup URL was still accessible.

            That seems like a huge bug / security issue.

            2 - How did you configure and daemonize pictrs?

            I don’t want to run that as root, so I ended up creating a pictrsxx user

            And a systemd service that runs as that user.

            /etc/systemd/system/lemmy-pictrsxx.service

            Which makes me wonder, what is the purpose of this “embed-pictrs” option.

            cargo install lemmy_server --target-dir /usr/bin/ --locked --features embed-pictrs

            3 - email

            Still can’t get smtp to work.

            • RoundSparrow
              0•11 months ago

              Which makes me wonder, what is the purpose of this “embed-pictrs” option.

              It probably does something to the code to enable the hand-off of the pictures, but doesn’t actually setup everything automatically. Not sure, just guessing.

              • @KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.mlOP
                1•11 months ago

                pictrs (when run as a server) runs its own server, but it needs the /usr/bin/magick binary from ImageMagick, and it doesn’t do a good job of complaining about it in the logs when it can’t find that binary.

                • RoundSparrow
                  1•11 months ago

                  it’s a good catch if indeed you found it runs as root. I wonder of the Ansible instructions create an account for it.