Development: Self-hosting Forem on Digital Ocean Servers.

> Update: There is no requirement of Elasticsearch in the new Forem

In this article, I focus less on my commentary and prefer more clarity in command execution. So if you find any words other than shell commands, take a good look at them.

One more tip while following this guide, single command lies in a single line.

This guide will be useful for anyone who wants to install forem in Linux. In a way, this is an alternative method to install Forem without Docker or Podman

Here is one of the living and breathing Forem Instance through VPS. Working Forem in Digital Ocean

Updating our system and Downloading Forem

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
git clone https://github.com/forem/forem.git
cp ~/forem/.env_sample ~/forem/.env

Ruby Installation

sudo apt install git curl autoconf bison build-essential \
    libssl-dev libyaml-dev libreadline6-dev zlib1g-dev \
    libncurses5-dev libffi-dev libgdbm6 libgdbm-dev libdb-dev

git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
exec $SHELL

git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
exec $SHELL

rbenv install $(cat ~/forem/.ruby-version)
rbenv global $(cat ~/forem/.ruby-version)

Install NVM and yarn

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.35.3/install.sh -o install_nvm.sh

bash install_nvm.sh
source ~/.profile
nvm install $(cat ~/forem/.nvmrc)
nvm use $(cat ~/forem/.nvmrc)

npm install -g yarn

Installing Postgre SQL

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev -y

In the coming command, Replace the term "ubuntu" with your own username.

sudo -u postgres createuser -s ubuntu
createdb
sudo -u ubuntu psql

Now within the psql Use \password command to create a password for the user ubuntu, in which we will create a database (later on).

You can exit psql by using the command \quit; this will help you get into the original bash/terminal of your VPS.

Let's update the DATABASE_URL and the DATABASE_URL_TEST accordingly in the .env file.

nano ~/forem/.env

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://ubuntu:mypassword@localhost:5432/$DATABASE_NAME"
DATABASE_URL_TEST="postgresql://ubuntu:mypasswordk@localhost:5432/$DATABASE_NAME_TEST"

Installing Imagemagick

sudo apt update && sudo apt install imagemagick

Installing and ConfiguringRedis

sudo apt install redis-server -y

sudo nano /etc/redis/redis.conf

Navigate to find the variable supervised and change it's value systemd

sudo systemctl restart redis.service

Installing Elastic search

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-oss-7.5.2-amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i elasticsearch-oss-7.5.2-amd64.deb

If you are someone who is trying to experiment with this Forem in a low-end server, maybe around 1GB or 2GB ram; It is mandatory for you to do edit the memory heap. And follow these if you are one among them, or else leave.

If you are not sure about this, skip and continue with the next step, but if you are facing any error in starting Elasticsearch try referring to this.

sudo nano /etc/elasticsearch/jvm.options

• First, un-comment the value of Xmx and Xms.
• Next, modify the value of -Xms and -Xmx to no more than 50% of your physical RAM

# Xms represents the initial size of total heap space
# Xmx represents the maximum size of total heap space
# Use 128m if 1GB ram and 256m if 2GB ram

-Xms128m
-Xmx128m

Now let's start Elasticsearch

sudo /bin/systemctl daemon-reload
sudo /bin/systemctl enable elasticsearch.service
sudo systemctl start elasticsearch.service

Installing ImgProxy

git clone https://github.com/imgproxy/imgproxy.git
cd imgproxy

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dhor/myway
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libvips-dev

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:longsleep/golang-backports
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install golang-go

sudo CGO_LDFLAGS_ALLOW="-s|-w" \
  go build -o /usr/local/bin/imgproxy

Now let's configure the .env for Imgproxy

• Generate a key/salt pair by running the following in your terminal twice. Copy those values to your .env in the next step

echo $(xxd -g 2 -l 64 -p /dev/random | tr -d '\n')

We have one random string; but we need two of them, so let's run this command again.

echo $(xxd -g 2 -l 64 -p /dev/random | tr -d '\n')

Now we have 2 random strings; we will one of them as key and the other as salt. This can be done by adding few lines in .env file.

nano ~/forem/.env

Now add these three lines to it and save the file.

IMGPROXY_ENDPOINT='http://localhost:8080'
IMGPROXY_KEY='1b1c9aae804e070b0864f2547fba7ce8ff31bf7..........'
IMGPROXY_SALT='8c6d449d4fc2cada5bab538826cae709d2ade9f.........'

Replace, the key and salt with the values you generated in few steps back. (You can interchange those values, but as a convention, I use the first one as key and the later as salt)

Also store these values in this fashion, so that we can use this command to start our Imgproxy.

IMGPROXY_KEY='your key' IMGPROXY_SALT='your salt' imgproxy

Now we have all the required side packs for our installation

Installing and Starting Forem

If you are using a VPS, it is mandatory for you to update your APP_DOMAIN value with your VPS IP address in the .env file.

• you can find your VPS IP address by using the command ifconfig
• Use this command to edit your .env file: nano ~/forem/.env

sudo apt-get install libcurl4 libcurl4-openssl-dev -y
cd ~/forem
gem install bundler
yarn install
bin/setup
rails db:reset
rails data_updates:run

Now open 3 Terminal, the three boxes below indicate 3 different terminals

• Terminal 01

IMGPROXY_KEY='your key' IMGPROXY_SALT='your salt' imgproxy

• Terminal 02

./bin/webpack-dev-server
bundle exec sidekiq -t 25

• Terminal 03

bin/rails s -p 3000 -b 0.0.0.0

This is an actively developing article, so you will find more commands than the usual commentary

Also, this article is not covering any sort of domain integrations; if you have any trouble in configuring Nginx and need some assistance, please let me know. I can help you in the comment section or update the article accordingly