What is Discourse?

Discourse is the next-next-generation community forum platform. Discourse has a thoroughly modern design and is written in JavaScript. Page loads are very fast and new content is loaded as the user scrolls down the page. Discourse allows you to create categories, tag posts, manage notifications, create user profiles, and includes features to let communities govern themselves by voting out trolls and spammers. Discourse is built for mobile from the ground up and support high-res devices.

https://www.discourse.org/

Prerequisites

To run this application you need Docker Engine 1.10.0. Docker Compose is recommended with a version 1.6.0 or later.

How to use this image

Run Discourse with a Database Container

Running Discourse with a database server is the recommended way. You can either use docker-compose or run the containers manually.

Run the application using Docker Compose

This is the recommended way to run Discourse. You can use the following docker compose template:

version: '2'

services:
  postgresql:
    image: 'bitnami/postgresql:latest'
    volumes:
      - 'postgresql_data:/bitnami/postgresql'
  redis:
    image: 'bitnami/redis:latest'
    volumes:
      - 'redis_data:/bitnami/redis'
  discourse:
    image: 'bitnami/discourse:latest'
    ports:
      - '80:3000'
    volumes:
      - 'discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse'
    depends_on:
      - postgresql
      - redis
  sidekiq:
    image: 'bitnami/discourse:latest'
    depends_on:
      - discourse
    volumes:
      - 'sidekiq_data:/bitnami/discourse-sidekiq'
    command: 'nami start --foreground discourse-sidekiq'
volumes:
  postgresql_data:
    driver: local
  redis_data:
    driver: local
  discourse_data:
    driver: local
  sidekiq_data:
    driver: local

Launch the containers using:

$ docker-compose up -d

Run the application manually

If you want to run the application manually instead of using docker-compose, these are the basic steps you need to run:

1. Create a new network for the application and the database:

$ docker network create discourse-tier

2. Start a Postgresql database in the network generated:

$ docker run -d --name postgresql --net=discourse-tier bitnami/postgresql

Note: You need to give the container a name in order to Discourse to resolve the host

3. Start Redis in the network generated:

$ docker run -d --name redis --net=discourse-tier bitnami/redis

4. Run the Discourse container:

$ docker run -d -p 80:3000 --name discourse --net=discourse-tier bitnami/discourse

Then you can access your application at http://your-ip/

Persisting your application

If you remove every container and volume all your data will be lost, and the next time you run the image the application will be reinitialized. To avoid this loss of data, you should mount a volume that will persist even after the container is removed. If you are using docker-compose your data will be persistent as long as you don't remove postgresql_data, redis_data and discourse_data data volumes. If you have run the containers manually or you want to mount the folders with persistent data in your host follow the next steps:

Note! If you have already started using your application, follow the steps on backing up to pull the data from your running container down to your host.

Mount persistent folders in the host using docker-compose

This requires a sightly modification from the template previously shown:

version: '2'

services:
  postgresql:
    image: 'bitnami/postgresql:latest'
    volumes:
      - '/path/to/your/local/postgresql_data:/bitnami/postgresql'
  redis:
    image: 'bitnami/redis:latest'
    volumes:
      - '/path/to/your/local/redis_data:/bitnami/redis'
  discourse:
    image: 'bitnami/discourse:latest'
    ports:
      - '80:3000'
    volumes:
      - '/path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami/discourse'
    depends_on:
      - postgresql
      - redis
  sidekiq:
    image: 'bitnami/discourse:latest'
    depends_on:
      - discourse
    volumes:
      - '/path/to/sidekiq-persistence:/bitnami/discourse-sidekiq'
    command: 'nami start --foreground discourse-sidekiq'

Mount persistent folders manually

In this case you need to specify the directories to mount on the run command. The process is the same than the one previously shown:

1. If you haven't done this before, create a new network for the application and the database:

$ docker network create discourse-tier

2. Start a Postgresql database in the previous network:

$ docker run -d --name postgresql \
--net=discourse-tier \
--volume /path/to/postgresql-persistence:/bitnami/postgresql \
bitnami/postgresql

3. Start Redis in the previous network as well:

$ docker run -d --name redis \
--net=discourse-tier \
--volume /path/to/redis-persistence:/bitnami/redis \
bitnami/redis

Note: You need to give the container a name in order to Discourse to resolve the host

4. Start Sidekiq in the previous network as well:

 $ docker run -d \
  --net=discourse-tier \
  --volume /path/to/sidekiq-persistence:/bitnami/discourse-sidekiq \
  bitnami/discourse nami start --foreground discourse-sidekiq

5. Run the Discourse container:

$ docker run -d --name discourse -p 80:80 \
--net=discourse-tier \
--volume /path/to/discourse-persistence:/bitnami/discourse \
bitnami/discourse

Upgrade this application

Bitnami provides up-to-date versions of Postgresql and Discourse, including security patches, soon after they are made upstream. We recommend that you follow these steps to upgrade your container. We will cover here the upgrade of the Discourse container. For the Postgresql upgrade see https://github.com/bitnami/bitnami-docker-postgresql/blob/master/README.md#upgrade-this-image

1. Get the updated images:

$ docker pull bitnami/discourse:latest

2. Stop your container

• For docker-compose: $ docker-compose stop discourse
• For manual execution: $ docker stop discourse

3. (For non-compose execution only) Create a backup if you have not mounted the discourse folder in the host.

4. Remove the currently running container

• For docker-compose: $ docker-compose rm -v discourse
• For manual execution: $ docker rm -v discourse

5. Run the new image

• For docker-compose: $ docker-compose start discourse
• For manual execution (mount the directories if needed): docker run --name discourse bitnami/discourse:latest

Configuration

Environment variables

When you start the discourse image, you can adjust the configuration of the instance by passing one or more environment variables either on the docker-compose file or on the docker run command line. If you want to add a new environment variable:

• For docker-compose add the variable name and value under the application section:

discourse:
  image: bitnami/discourse:latest
  ports:
    - 80:80
  environment:
    - DISCOURSE_PASSWORD=bitnami
  volumes_from:
    - discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse

• For manual execution add a -e option with each variable and value:

 $ docker run -d --name discourse -p 80:80 \
 --net=discourse-tier \
 --env DISCOURSE_PASSWORD=bitnami \
 --volume discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse \
 bitnami/discourse

Available variables:

• DISCOURSE_USERNAME: Discourse application username. Default: user
• DISCOURSE_PASSWORD: Discourse application password. Default: bitnami1
• DISCOURSE_EMAIL: Discourse application email. Default: user@example.com
• DISCOURSE_SITENAME: Discourse site name. Default: User's site
• POSTGRES_USER: Root user for the Postgresql database. Default: postgres
• POSTGRES_PASSWORD: Root password for Postgresql.
• POSTGRES_MASTER_HOST: Hostname for Postgresql server. Default: postgresql
• POSTGRES_MASTER_PORT: Port used by Postgresql server. Default: 5432
• POSTGRESQL_USERNAME: Discourse application database user. bn_discourse
• POSTGRESQL_USERPASSWORD: Discourse application database password. bitnami1
• POSTGRESQL_DATABASE: Discourse application database name. bitnami_application
• REDIS_MASTER_HOST: Hostname for Redis. Default: redis
• REDIS_MASTER_PORT: Port used by Redis. Default: 6379
• REDIS_PASSWORD: Password for Redis.

SMTP Configuration

To configure Discourse to send email using SMTP you can set the following environment variables:

• SMTP_HOST: Host for outgoing SMTP email. No defaults.
• SMTP_PORT: Port for outgoing SMTP email. No defaults.
• SMTP_USER: User of SMTP used for authentication (likely email). No defaults.
• SMTP_PASSWORD: Password for SMTP. No defaults.
• SMTP_TLS: Whether use TLS protocol for SMTP or not. Default: true.

This would be an example of SMTP configuration using a GMail account:

• docker-compose (application part):

  discourse:
    image: 'bitnami/discourse:latest'
    ports:
      - '80:3000'
    environment:
      - SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com
      - SMTP_PORT=587
      - SMTP_USER=your_email@gmail.com
      - SMTP_PASSWORD=your_password
    volumes:
      - 'discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse'

• For manual execution:

$ docker run -d --name discourse -p 80:3000 \
  --net discourse-tier \
  --env SMTP_HOST=smtp.gmail.com --env SMTP_PORT=587 \
  --env SMTP_USER=your_email@gmail.com --env SMTP_PASSWORD=your_password \
  --volume discourse_data:/bitnami/discourse \
  bitnami/discourse:latest

Backing up your application

To backup your application data follow these steps:

1. Stop the running container:

• For docker-compose: $ docker-compose stop discourse
• For manual execution: $ docker stop discourse

2. Copy the Discourse data folder in the host:

$ docker cp /your/local/path/bitnami:/bitnami/discourse

Restoring a backup

To restore your application using backed up data simply mount the folder with Discourse data in the container. See persisting your application section for more info.

Contributing

We'd love for you to contribute to this container. You can request new features by creating an issue, or submit a pull request with your contribution.

Issues

If you encountered a problem running this container, you can file an issue. For us to provide better support, be sure to include the following information in your issue:

• Host OS and version
• Docker version (docker version)
• Output of docker info
• Version of this container (echo $BITNAMI_APP_VERSION inside the container)
• The command you used to run the container, and any relevant output you saw (masking any sensitive information)

License

Copyright 2017 Bitnami

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.