My site was there --- and then was gone

birch

Yes, Im quite sure the added user was done correctly -

I'll restart the server.

Tiki

@birch Also, make sure you're in the right Folder when you're trying to start it. Do "CD Folder name" and then nodejs app.

birch

alright, so server is restarted. I think I have supervisor installed - did have the Forever Service but removed it.
went to the directory - entered ./nodebb start - but still not working.

Tiki

@birch Did you put in a redis password during installation ?

birch

@Tiki - not that I recall, no.

Tiki

@birch did you install NodeBB under root? or the user you created?

birch

It was installed in root - before I created another user.

Tiki

@birch You need to re-install under the user you Created. I'll be uploading an Updated guide soon if you're wanting something to help with that.

birch

Yes, that would be great. ugh... have to do it again? lol this hurts my brain
I also want to install it into a domain this time. Is that able to be done while installing it? Or is there something else I have to do. I might as well just destroy the other droplet and create new.
(Digital Ocean said I should be using a larger package for the NodeBB - but I had read that the 512 would be enough, especially with not having a user base)

Tiki

@birch It's possible, usually easier through IP.

a_5mith

The issue you're seeing is because of the emailer-mandrill plugin. It appears to be for a different version to what you're running. You can run ./nodebb reset nodebb-plugin-emailer-mandrill

Then start the forum. Also in your config.json you have supplied a password, but not put the same password into redis.conf in /etc/redis/. It doesn't matter, but if you want to secure your forum, put a password on Redis.

birch

@a_5mith do you have a suggestion for keeping the site online? Should I reinstall Forever Service? (which seems different than the Forever Daemon suggested here https://docs.nodebb.org/en/latest/running/ ) - right now ill deal with the mandrill - it was an optional plug in in the ACP so I thought it would be good to install it
still won't come up
wasn't sure whether to use ./nodebb start or node app - tried both.
./nodebb start seems to indicate the process went fine but still down.
node app gave me this:

I think I'll just delete the droplet again.
ill create a new user -sudo and install it in that directory.

a_5mith

@birch said:

I think I'll just delete the droplet again.
ill create a new user -sudo and install it in that directory.

Completely unnecessary. Just fix the errors you are seeing and it will work just fine. There should be no reason your forum is going offline, mine has been up and running since March with no downtime (except for me stopping it to run an update etc).

Cannot read propety buildHeader of undefined is an error with you running a plugin not designed for your version of nodebb. What version of NodeBB are you running? If 0.6.x, you need the latest version of whatever plugin is giving you that error. If you're running 0.5.x, then either update to 0.6.x, or run the version of the plugin before the 0.6.x changes were added.

birch

support at DO told me it was best to destroy the droplet and start over (and suggested my 512 ram would be too small to run Nodebb)
I don't know how to fix the errors because I can't get my forum online to deactivate and uninstall the plugins.
My first install was based on psychobunnies tut that I had found when searching 'installing NodeBB'
that was outdated it seems - and I had a really really hard time installing it.
It was up and running. I was so thrilled. Then the next day I woke up and it was gone. Support was unable to help me and told me to look at NodeBB documentation.
Then above, once finding out that it was outdated info and getting a link to the newer installation - I started over. Much easier this time - but still must have missed soemthing because two hours later it was down. However initially ./nodebb restart worked.
Now it does not. So - droplet destroyed I will try again. I know the docs are simple - but for me it is quite foreign. I was proud of myself for getting ghost running

a_5mith

@birch said:

support at DO told me it was best to destroy the droplet and start over (and suggested my 512 ram would be too small to run Nodebb)

Rubbish. I'm running with 512mb of RAM and have almost 30,000 posts. I can even get Magento running on 512mb droplets even though they "recommend" 2GB.

I don't know how to fix the errors because I can't get my forum online to deactivate and uninstall the plugins.

You don't need it to be online, you can deactivate and uninstall plugins from the terminal.

Then above, once finding out that it was outdated info and getting a link to the newer installation - I started over. Much easier this time - but still must have missed soemthing because two hours later it was down. However initially ./nodebb restart worked.

If the site was down, restarting it would have done nothing. I encourage you to explore ./nodebb logs whenever you have an issue, they tell you literally everything that is wrong.

julian

@a_5mith Actually, I think he was talking about us

@birch I had no clue you had posted here and was in the process of debugging your instance -- the forum here is your best bet at getting everything up and running, and the documentation should provide enough instruction to get everything set up.

What happens when you run ./nodebb restart?

a_5mith

@julian Ahhh, thought he meant DO. Amended for incorrectness.

birch

@a_5mith said:

@julian Ahhh, thought he meant DO. Amended for incorrectness.

I'm a girl ...
Digital Ocean is where I am hosted and yes I was told to just delete and start over and that I needed a bigger droplet size..
,/nodebb restart looks like it was doing something - but it never came back online

Also the first time, when it went offline - i had nothing installed. No plug ins or anything. I simply got it runinng - at about 4am, lol. Went to sleep, got up maybe 4 hours later and it was gone..
This time I put in Forever and a few other things to keep it running -- and as test I did a server restart and everything came back up on it's own . I thought woot! Awesome, Forever Service is auto restarting nodebb Then I played with it a bit, mainly just changed theme (love cucina!) - added mail thingy because I had read that that was the plug in to use-- and it was still fine for another half hour or so then suddenly when i went from one page to another it was gone. restarting it in root didnt work - nothing.
So now it's destroyed and Im wary about trying again because I think it really might be out of my league. Ive used MyBB most of my forum years - really wanted to do something different this time round.

psychobunny

You might have installed a plugin that wasn't compatible, the latest version of NodeBB should prevent this issue if you're installing them via ACP, but if you're installing it via command line there isn't any safeguards.

./nodebb log to see the log, for any crash messages

And destroying the droplet is overkill, you can usually get things running by looking at the crash log and figuring out what's wrong (post the error here)

birch

@psychobunny - the only things i installed this most recent time via command was supervisor and forever. the other was installed via ACP. this installation was done via the docs link offered to me above.

When my site went down the day before, and stayed down for hours - then, I had not installed anything at all, however I had installed using the Installing NodeBB for Dummies.
As for destroying it, I did what was recommended to be via DO support.
I'm not familiar with command lines - i dual boot with linux but rarely use it - so really the whole thing is a huge learning curve for me