Setting up nodeBB on dokku

Sp4rkR4t

Hey people, I am extremely new to node.js, NodeBB & dokku but I've been trying to set up a nodeBB forum on my dokku image on digital ocean and although I have set up redis to work with the app when I run --setup it fails to connect to it, anyone else using a setup like this and any pointers for getting it working. The error I get is this;

error: Redis connection to [IP ADDRESS] failed - connect ECONNREFUSED

I have redis setup and dokku has linked the container to my forum container, I pass the correct IP & port during setup but the connection fails, I'm at a bit of a loss.

finid

@Sp4rkR4t

Is the redis-server running? And what distribution are you using?

Sp4rkR4t

It's the dokku application image on digital ocean, it's running on ubuntu 13.04. How would I check that redis is running in this setup, finding it quite confusing atm.

finid

@Sp4rkR4t

I've not used Dokku, but I'm guessing that it will be the same as checking the status of any server on Ubuntu. Try this command: sudo service redis-server status.

Sp4rkR4t

No, that just returns unrecognized service.

finid

@Sp4rkR4t

Ubuntu may not recognize it as a service, but maybe if you are inside the Dokku container, it will. Just a thought.

Sp4rkR4t

Just tried running;

dokku run forum service redis-server status

and it returned the same.

finid

@Sp4rkR4t

The obvious question then is, is Redis installed? I know you said you said that "set up redis to work with the app," but it doesn't seem to be showing that.

Sp4rkR4t

It does seem that dokku hasn't installed redis, trying to get it set up now. Through the guides I've been following and watching dokku auto-install and configure everything else I thought having the dokku redis plugin would install redis for my container, seems that isn't the case.

julian

@sp4rkr4t Do you have the ability to execute redis-cli from your Dokku image? If you can ssh into the server and attempt to use redis-cli with the redis credentials, you can see if there's a problem establishing the connection from there.

mouseluka

I tried to put on nodebb Doku here on this a manual (nodebb wiki link).

8 point is passed
Instead 9th - you have to install the dokker-redis-plugin

Eventually I got a working application on Dokku, but do not know how to make the configuration process, but I can not process console to answer the questions of the installer.

Sp4rkR4t

I rebuilt the dokku image and this time install redis-server via apt myself, then installed the dokku-redis plugin and set it up for my forum container as the plugin says, then I pushed the nodebb code and that all set up but still I cannot connect to redis during setup. This is a real shame that I cannot figure this out as I don't really want to move forward with putting the rest of my stuff in containers until I have this figured out/fixed.

julian

Hm.. for Heroku setup, I ended up running node app --setup from my local machine, and then pushing the code including the generated config.json file, to the Heroku server. Perhaps something like that is required?

Sp4rkR4t

No with dokku you can push the node app --setup command to the container fine, just can't get the setup to talk to the redis server.

finid

@Sp4rkR4t

Is there an error log that you can pull info from so you have a better idea why you can't connect to Redis?

julian

Also, where is dokku in relation to your redis server? I'm assuming a containered instance won't understand 127.0.0.1 to be your local PC.

Sp4rkR4t

@julian It's in a container created by the plugin which also is meant to tie it to the forum container. I think you are right that it can't interpret the address correctly as I just tried a clean install but this time with mongodb and that plugin and had the exact same issue.