Installing NodeBB in a subfolder of another site

finid

My primary concern now is to get it to work. Installing it in a subdomain is not something I want to do, so any tips you can share will be very much appreciated.

finid

@baris

I tried that http://site.com/subfolder during a local install and the installation failed, that's why I didn't bother with passing that URL on the live site.

finid

@baris

Ok, so I tried a new local installation in a subfolder and here's what happened

I can specify http://ip-address/subfolder during installation and answer n when asked if the application should connect via a port number. However, it seems that NodeBB is ignoring that, because of this output on starting it.

info: Initializing NodeBB v0.3.0, on port 4567, using redis store at 127.0.0.1:6379.
info: NodeBB instance bound to: Any address (0.0.0.0)
info: Using ports 80 and 443 is not recommend; use a proxy instead. See README.md
info: NodeBB Ready

And if I navigate to http://ip-address/forum, I get redirected to http://ip-address:4567/forum

Note that this is without messing with Nginx yet, but @baris, @julian, @psychobunny, what do you make of NodeBB ignoring the do-not-connect-via-port-number directive?

julian

@planner What's your config.json? If you specified port 80 or 443 in the setup, it shouldn't fall back to using 4567...

finid

@julian

Well, I did not specify port 80 or 443, at least not explicitly. But I assume that by specifying http://ip-address/forum, I'm implicitly telling it to connect via whatever port the parent application is connecting to, which in this case, is 80.

julian

And if I navigate to http://ip-address/forum, I get redirected to http://ip-address:4567/forum

Hm, if you specified port 4567 in the setup, NodeBB does not listen on port 80, so I don't quite know why you got redirected when accessing /forum with no port. In any case, I've confirmed that NodeBB does listen on the port you specify during setup. If you have not set up the proxy yet, you will not be able to access your site without a port number...

finid

@julian

Here's my config.json:

{
    "base_url": "http://192.168.1.4",
    "port": "4567",
    "use_port": false,
    "secret": "fff02b17-b9cc-444c-b929-85ec9cecec93",
    "bind_address": "0.0.0.0",
    "database": "redis",
    "redis": {
        "host": "127.0.0.1",
        "port": "6379",
        "password": "redis",
        "database": "0"
    },
    "bcrypt_rounds": 12,
    "upload_path": "/public/uploads",
    "relative_path": "/forum"

It shows that even after telling it not to connect via port 4567, it still did anyway.

julian

Actually, the use_port directive is more of a "if we need to construct a URL, use the port number in it". NodeBB will always listen on the port specified. Sorry for the confusion!

finid

@julian

Ok, thanks.

Any clues how I can get it to connect properly, that is, via http://ip-address/forum?

julian

You'll have to use a proxy... or start NodeBB using port 80 (which, as the warning suggests, is not recommended). You'll need root access to run NodeBB under port 80.

bentael

info: Using ports 80 and 443 is not recommend; use a proxy instead. See README.md

not recommend

recommend

you can tell i'm arab

edit: I added that warning.

julian

Hahaha... Asians make those mistakes too. That's my official reason for not noticing the typo.

finid

@julian

I'm not an Arab or Asian and I didn't notice it. What's my excuse?

finid

@baris, @julian, @psychobunny, I'm still on this.

If I modify the code given here for the subfolder installation to look like this:

upstream nodejs {
    server 192.168.1.4:4567;
}

server {
    listen 80;

    server_name 192.168.1.4:4567;
    root /var/www/forum;

    location /forum {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;

        proxy_pass http://192.168.1.4:4567;
        proxy_redirect off;

        # Socket.IO Support
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    }
}

I get a 403 Forbidden error message when I attempt to access http://ip-address/forum.

And if I replace server_name 192.168.1.4:4567; with server_name 192.168.1.4/forum;. nginx -t reports"

nginx: [warn] server name "127.0.0.1/forum" has suspicious symbols in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:91

Note that NodeBB (nodejs) is listening on the default port, even though I didn't want it to.

Any suggestions?

julian

NodeBB has to listen on a port. It could listen on a UNIX socket, but that's outside of the scope of this question (and is pretty pointless, anyway).

Given your nginx config, please make the following changes:

Remove the upstream portion, as you don't seem to be referencing it anymore
Remove the root directive, it is not required
server_name should be 192.168.1.4, no port

nginx -t should work then, and you can restart it and try again.

nginx: [warn] server name "127.0.0.1/forum" has suspicious symbols in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:91

If you still get this error, take a look at what's on line 91 of default..!

finid

@julian

I'm getting warmer. Here's what I did:

I just added the code below into the default server block, that is, no separate server block for NodeBB.

location ^~ /forum {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;

        proxy_pass http://192.168.1.4:4567;
        proxy_redirect off;
    }

Navigated to http://ip-address/forum and got the default page, minus the default categories. And clicking on any of the buttons returns nothing. No error messages in the log files.

I'll recircle back to the previous attempt, but what do you make of this?

Here's a screenshot:

julian

What shows up in the console tab of the chrome inspector? This will help @baris debug, if necessary

finid

@julian

GET http://192.168.1.4/forum/404 404 (Not Found) 192.168.1.4/:25
Uncaught ReferenceError: io is not defined nodebb.min.js:7
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property 'initialLoad' of undefined 192.168.1.4/:270
Uncaught ReferenceError: templates is not defined nodebb.min.js:8
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'emit' of undefined

That's the type of messages on clicking on any link.

In Nginx's access.log, I get lines like:

"GET /forum/api/config HTTP/1.1" 200 265 "http://192.168.1.4/forum/" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/27.0.1453.93 Safari/537.36"

Nothing in Nginx's error.log.

Btw, clicking on the Unread link loads the default Nginx page.

finid

Ok, @baris, @julian, @psychobunny, I think I've gone the whole nine yards on this. The problem is most likely that NodeBB is not at the state where it can be installed and work correctly in a subfolder. The best I've been able to get, is a blank home page with header links that don't work.

I'll just keep adding content to the live site and hope that somebody takes a shot at fixing it before it goes live.

If you guys want to use me as a test case, go right ahead!

finid

@julian, @baris

Is this something that's doable with NodeBB or should I opt for a subdomain installation?