this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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How would we go about asking say, Cpanel / Softaculous to have a one click install for lemmy? It's currently possible with many server applications and it would be awesome to have lemmy on that list

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Lemmy, although in a very well working state, isnt really deploy ready. The update procedure is a mess, the documentation is less than stellar and accessibility/onboarding for wannabe admins is rough to say the least.

You can find a compose file on github and you will need to make a config file for the instance with your domain and all on it.

A one click install sure is doable but most people who are able to do this quickly are very busy or wont do it for free.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I ended up going down the Ansible route after spending about 6 hours trying the easy-deploy and "manual docker install", failing miserably with both.

I expected the other methods to be easier but nothing ended up working. Tried the official ansible method with a caddy proxy and it took maybe 30 mins.

I would definitely have given up if I wasn't so stubborn.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Great! Glad it worked out for you. The second time I deployed lemmy on a production machine it was markedly easier because I have a known working compose and lemmy.hjson file so thats one part. I think the first install/config took me days of tinkering.

At the moment, I cant see if I‘ll havre the time to ever make a cone click install script but I‘ll think about it.

Good luck with your instance.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It should still work!

I only go back and make changes to LED if something breaks with a major Lemmy update, but Lemmy hasn't had a major update since January. Lemmy v0.19.4 isn't released yet, but when it is, I'll make sure the deployment is up to date.

Note that it does not have any advanced features that a major instance might want, such as storing images on S3, exporting data, or image moderation. If you intend for your instance to grow for 100+ users, this isn't for you. This is only intended for beginners who are overwhelmed by the other Lemmy hosting options, and want an easy way to host a small single-user or small-user instance.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Well it works well enough for my small instance, so a thimbs up from here.

I'll also point out that it was easy to configure and chang for my needs

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Hey OP, I found this install script for yunohost.

https://github.com/YunoHost-Apps/lemmy_ynh

Maybe that's enough to help you create the same for C Panel or something like it?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I hear you. I just yesterday tried the docker apporach and gave up after the fourth error occurred during startup. I'll watch this thread and hope for a simpler solutionfor a mere mortal to follow. (Edited)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

The docker instructions are a hot pile of garbage, unfortunately. The referenced docker compose file, for example, is for installing via Ansible I think. There's another Docker Compose file somewhere in the GitHub which is formatted for regular installation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

FYI here's a link to the other compose file I was talking about: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/docker/docker-compose.yml

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Lemmy is little too complex for a one click install.

Lemmy consists of:

  1. Lemmy
  2. Lemmy-ui
  3. Postgresql
  4. Pict-rs
  5. Probably something else I'm forgetting.

Each one of those has a number of environmental config options that need to be set before running it all. You need a domain name so that other instances can reach your instance. Your database needs a password, Pict-rs needs to know where to store things, etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

With docker-compose it's almost there. Putting everything into a script with sensible defaults asking just for what is absolutely necessary should be relatively easy. It's just that nobody bothered to do that.

Of course, if you want to have a performant instance with more than one user you will have to tweak everything according to your needs. But to simply get up and running isn't that hard.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I put you back to +1.

What if I want to run lemmy entirely within my lean only?

So I don't have a domain name. Does that make the setup any easier?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's absurdly complex and annoying and lacks proper documentation.

There currently is no sane way to deploy it via docker since it needs half a dozen of different containers and volumes and networks to barely work at all - overwriting/ruining your already existing setup while doing so.

The cleanest would likely be setting up a VM where you set up docker in and let Lemmy do whatever it wants.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Mine's running on a single docker-compose.yml and it's like 4 services: the backend, the frontend, the database and pictrs. That's hardly insane nor complicated nor ruining existing setups.

It's probably one of the easiest services I've run in quite a while.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It's also very easy to make it highly available and to scale horizontally.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

And two networks and a reverse proxy and four more volumes ...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago