Hello all!

I finally got my Lemmy instance up and running yay!

It runs on a local machine, I have nginx installed and my website pointing onto it.

lemmy.mindoki.com => my_static_ip(port 80) => local_ip => nginx

In ngunx I just set up a hello world message, and it works out. lemmy.mindoki.com shows it.

Now, my Lemmy instance is accessible on 0.0.0.0:1236 but obviously only from inside the hosting machine itself.

I have tinkered a bit with the nginx.conf but I feel there is lot of things to do wrongly, especially as it’s ‘dynamic’, but also it seems like a schoolbook example (for Lemmy, so no hits on my favourite search engine), so maybe someone has a working nginx.conf file to spare for a basic setup like this?

Thanks a bunch!

  • Valmond@lemmy.mlOP
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    1 year ago

    Thank you and yes, yes it does clarify a lot how nginx is working!

    I’m trying to use use the conf file coming with lemmy docker install, and after some searching I don’t even know if this is deprecated or not (it’s in the http{} ), or how I should tell nginx the information about where to find the docker devices:

    upstream lemmy {
        # this needs to map to the lemmy (server) docker service hostname
        server "lemmy:8536";
    }
    upstream lemmy-ui {
        # this needs to map to the lemmy-ui docker service hostname
        server "lemmy-ui:1234";
    }
    

    Also, shouldn’t I tell nginx to listen to port 80?

    Also, I get this error when I run “sudo nginx -s reload” and I don’t even understand what it means:

    nginx: [emerg] host not found in upstream “lemmy” in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:53

    Thank you again, I’m a slow learner!

    • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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      1 year ago

      There’s two NGINX servers in the Docker setup: one on the inside, and one on the outside/on the host.

      If you run NGINX from the host or outside of the docker-compose, lemmy and lemmy-ui won’t resolve because that only exists within Docker. It does a bit of magic that essentially amounts to putting these in the containers’ /etc/hosts and maps to the internal IPs that the containers get. Docker has some sort of virtual router built-in, each compose gets its own virtual network and everything.

      If you use the Docker setup, you can use the configs I linked from the Ansible repo essentially as-is with minor tweaks. The internal NGINX config can be kept completely unchanged, and the outside one only needs minor tweaks to set up your own hostname and the port for the internal one. You only need to fill in the {{domain}} and {{lemmy_port}} placeholders in the outside one. The example outside NGINX config already listens to both 80 and 443.

      Basically with the suggested setup, you go Internet -> your server (port 80/443) -> the internal NGINX in Docker (port 1236) -> lemmy/lemmy-ui.

      • Valmond@lemmy.mlOP
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        1 year ago

        Good morning and thank you, I’ll use your recommended config asap, and then be back with more questions most probably :-) !

      • Valmond@lemmy.mlOP
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        1 year ago

        Hello !

        I followed your instructions, taking the:

        lemmy-ansible/templates/nginx_internal.conf
        

        and sticking:

        lemmy-ansible/templates/nginx.conf
        

        in the “http {” section + changing all the {{domain}} to lemmy.mindoki.com and changing the {{lemmy_port}} to 1236 (FYI: 0.0.0.0:1236 hits up Lemmy locally)

        Saving it all off in the nginx nginx.conf file.

        I feel exceedingly stupid, but is this the way to go? Because I get this error when I reload nginx:

        nginx: [emerg] host not found in upstream “lemmy:8536” in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:111

        Cheers and thanks again!

        Edit: removing the upstreams, changed the backend proxy_pass, but to no avail…

        • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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          1 year ago

          Can you describe your setup in more details? Are you using the Docker setup with also NGINX running on the host outside of Docker?

          If so, nginx_internal.conf must be passed in as a volume to the inner NGINX via the docker-compose. On the host, you only need the bits from nginx.conf. Don’t try to use the internal ones, it doesn’t make sense.

          If you post your configs it will be easier to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong. Also paste the output of docker ps.

          • Valmond@lemmy.mlOP
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            1 year ago

            I’m off one week on holidays, will sure post all config when I come back, thanks again!

          • Valmond@lemmy.mlOP
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            1 year ago

            Hello, I’m back with more questions and clarifications!

            This is what I did to install Lemmy:

            Install a fresh Linux Mint on an old PC.

            Follow the ‘official’ docker install: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/install_docker.html

            I continued with nginx, lets encrypt etc.

            I also installed PosgreSQL and added a user Lemmy.

            I forward a TCP connection from my fix public IP to the lemmy PC and pointed lemmy.mindoki.com with an A redirection onto that public IP:PORT.

            The only ‘exotic’ thing done was that I added these lines to /home/fediverse/.bashrc :

            export LEMMY_CONFIG_LOCATION=“/media/fediverse/Storage/lemmy/lemmy.hjson”

            EMMY_DATABASE_URL=“postgres://lemmy:redacted_password@localhost:5432/lemmy”

            . “$HOME/.cargo/env”

            I don’t think (but not completely sure) that the last line was added by me manually.

            Now I can access Lemmy locally on localhost:1236 and everything works (inscription, creations of ‘subs’ etc).

            I added the nginx.conf config file at the end of this message (some lines are commented out to make it work at all).

            Almost feels like I should have a very much shorter nginx config file 🙃

            Thanks again!

            Cheers

            .

            .

            .

            nginx.conf :

            worker_processes auto;

            events { worker_connections 1024; }

            http {

            limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=lemmy.mindoki.com_ratelimit:10m rate=1r/s;
            
            server {
                listen 80;
                listen [::]:80;
                server_name lemmy.mindoki.com;
                # Hide nginx version
                server_tokens off;
                location /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
                    root /var/www/certbot;
                }
                location / {
                    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
                }
            }
            
            server {
                listen 443 ssl http2;
                listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
                server_name lemmy.mindoki.com;
            
                ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/lemmy.mindoki.com/fullchain.pem;
                ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/lemmy.mindoki.com/privkey.pem;
            
            
                ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
                ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
                ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256';
                ssl_session_timeout  10m;
                ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
                ssl_session_tickets on;
                ssl_stapling on;
                ssl_stapling_verify on;
            
                # Hide nginx version
                server_tokens off;
            
                # Enable compression for JS/CSS/HTML bundle, for improved client load times.
                # It might be nice to compress JSON, but leaving that out to protect against potential
                # compression+encryption information leak attacks like BREACH.
                gzip on;
                gzip_types text/css application/javascript image/svg+xml;
                gzip_vary on;
            
                # Various content security headers
                add_header Referrer-Policy "same-origin";
                add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
                add_header X-Frame-Options "DENY";
                add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
            
            
                location / {
                  proxy_pass http://0.0.0.0:1236;
                  proxy_http_version 1.1;
                  proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
                  proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
                  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                  proxy_set_header Host $host;
                  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                }
            }
            
            access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log combined;
            
            
            
            # We construct a string consistent of the "request method" and "http accept header"
            # and then apply soem ~simply regexp matches to that combination to decide on the
            # HTTP upstream we should proxy the request to.
            #
            # Example strings:
            #
            #   "GET:application/activity+json"
            #   "GET:text/html"
            #   "POST:application/activity+json"
            #
            # You can see some basic match tests in this regex101 matching this configuration
            # https://regex101.com/r/vwMJNc/1
            #
            # Learn more about nginx maps here http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_map_module.html
            map "$request_method:$http_accept" $proxpass {
                # If no explicit matches exists below, send traffic to lemmy-ui
                default "http://lemmy-ui";
            
                # GET/HEAD requests that accepts ActivityPub or Linked Data JSON should go to lemmy.
                #
                # These requests are used by Mastodon and other fediverse instances to look up profile information,
                # discover site information and so on.
                "~^(?:GET|HEAD):.*?application\/(?:activity|ld)\+json" "http://lemmy";
            
                # All non-GET/HEAD requests should go to lemmy
                #
                # Rather than calling out POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, CONNECT and all the verbs manually
                # we simply negate the GET|HEAD pattern from above and accept all possibly $http_accept values
                "~^(?!(GET|HEAD)).*:" "http://lemmy";
            }
            
            #upstream lemmy {
                # this needs to map to the lemmy (server) docker service hostname
            #    server "lemmy:8536";
            #}
            
            #upstream lemmy-ui {
                # this needs to map to the lemmy-ui docker service hostname
            #    server "lemmy-ui:1234";
            #}
            
            server {
                # this is the port inside docker, not the public one yet
                listen 1236;
                listen 8536;
            
                # change if needed, this is facing the public web
                server_name localhost;
                server_tokens off;
            
                gzip on;
                gzip_types text/css application/javascript image/svg+xml;
                gzip_vary on;
            
                # Upload limit, relevant for pictrs
                client_max_body_size 20M;
            
                add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
                add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
                add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
            
                # frontend general requests
                location / {
                    proxy_pass $proxpass;
            
                    rewrite ^(.+)/+$ $1 permanent;
            
                    # Send actual client IP upstream
                    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                    proxy_set_header Host $host;
                    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                }
            
                # backend
                location ~ ^/(api|pictrs|feeds|nodeinfo|.well-known) {
                    proxy_pass "https://lemmy";
            
                    # proxy common stuff
                    proxy_http_version 1.1;
                    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
                    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
            
                    # Send actual client IP upstream
                    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                    proxy_set_header Host $host;
                    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                }
            }
            

            }

            • Valmond@lemmy.mlOP
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              1 year ago

              EDIT: The site itself works now, so I “only” need help with nginx :-)

              EDIT: DISCARD THE FOLLOWING LINES (Strike-through doesn’t seem to work):

              ~~BTW, I get a handful of errors when I start Lemmy :

              thread ‘main’ panicked at 'Error connecting to postgres://lemmy:thepassword@postgres:5432/lemmy: could not connect to server: Connection refused

              lemmy_1 | Is the server running on host “postgres” (172.18.0.2) and accepting

              lemmy_1 | TCP/IP connections on port 5432?

              I do not know at all where that 172.18.0.2 address comes from sweating :-D~~