Forem Google Cloud Setup on MacOS

Introduction

In this guide you will learn how to set up your Forem self-host instance on Google Cloud.
You will also set up DNS for your domain and restart Forem Traefik service to generate a TLS cert.

Prerequisites

• Forem Requirements guide
• Quick Start in Depth guide.
• A Google Cloud Account

Step 1- Installing Google Cloud Ansible Collection

In this step you will install the necessary collection for Google Cloud.

In your terminal make sure you are in the selfhost directory with:

cd selfhost

Install the Google Cloud Ansible collection with:

ansible-galaxy collection install google.cloud

Alternatively you can install all the cloud provider collections with:

ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml

This is useful if you want to try other cloud providers.

Step 2- Installing requests and google-auth modules

In this step you will install the pip modules requests and google-auth. The requests module is an HTTP library that allows you to send HTTP/1.1 requests. The google-auth module is a library the simplifies using Google’s various server-to-server authentication mechanisms to access Google APIs

In your terminal type:

pip3 install requests google-auth

Step 3- Creating a Google Cloud Service Account

In this step you set up a Google Cloud Service Account and add privileges.

Open the Service accounts page.

Click Create Project

In the Project name field add the name forem-selfhost and click the CREATE button.

To add privileges select the newly created project from the Select Project dropdown.

Click the IAM & Admin link in the side menu.

Navigate to the Roles link in the side menu.

In the filter search bar type Compute Instance Admin and choose the v1 option

Check the box to add the Compute Instance Admin (v1) role to the forem-selfhost

Step 5- Downloading a JSON Credentials File

In this step you will generate and download a JSON Credentials file and add it to a ~/.gcp/forem.json directory.

Navigate back to the homepage of your current project.

Hover over the APIs & Services side menu llink and click the Credentials link in the dropdown menu.

On the Credentials page click the + Create Credentials link and select Service Account

Give your service a name and add a description of what the service does.
Then click Create and Continue

Add at least the Owner role to the "Grant this service account access to project.
Then click Done.

Under the Credentials page you should now see your newly created credentials under Service Accounts.

Click on the newly created service account.

Navigate to the Keys tab and click the ADD KEY and Create new key link.

Select the JSON key type and click CREATE. The json file will then be downloaded to your computer.

You can now find the name of your downloaded file and place it in ~/.gcp/forem.json.

First create a directory on your computer called ~/.gcp with the following command:

mkdir ~/.gcp

Then move the downloaded json file to ~/.gcp with the following command:

mv ~/my_gcp_forem.json ~/.gcp/forem.json

You can check to see if the file is in the correct place with the following commands:

cd ~/.gcp

to navigate to the directory.

Then type ls to list what files are in the directory.

You should see your forem.json file listed in the ~/.gcp directory.

Now you are ready to run your ansible playbook.

Step 6- Provisioning the Playbook

In this step you will provision the Google Cloud provider playbook to set up your Forem.

In your terminal type:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/forem/setup.yml playbooks/providers/gcp.yml

Once you run the command, you should see an output in your terminal similar to the code below with your community's domain name and IP address.

Now you can set up an A record and point it to your public IPv4 IP Address

Step 5- Setting up DNS

In this step you will see an example of creating an A record in NameCheap and pointing it to the IP address that was outputted in the previous step. If you are not using NameCheap please refer to your own domain provider for how to set up DNS.

In the Advanced DNS section add an A record for your domain and subdomain.

Set the value to the IP address that was outputted after provisioning.

Set TTL to 1minute.

Step 6- Restarting Forem Traefik Service

In this step you will reset Forem Traefik Service via SSH to generate a TLS cert.

In your terminal type:

ssh core@<SERVER IP ADDRESS>

replacing with your community name.

Here is an example using a community name:

If prompted to continue, type yes into your terminal.

Once you have connected to your Forem server, type the following command:

sudo systemctl restart forem-traefik.service

Now, you can navigate to your community domain. You should see a "Let's Start your Forem Journey" page.
You may need to wait a few minutes after running the Forem Traefik command.

Conclusion

Congratulations on setting up your first Forem!🎉

For next steps on how to configure your Forem please visit our Forem Admin Docs.