discourse-spike

Throwaway official-image Discourse stack to spike-test restoring the bedford-ma backup (bedford-ma-community-forums-2026-08-30-…-v20250709051949.tar.gz, ~Discourse 3.5.x) on Coolify → worker2. GREEN = migrate bedfordma to Coolify (compose); RED = official launcher install on a father VM.

Stack

• web — discourse/discourse:2026.9.0-latest (launcher-built web_only image: nginx + unicorn/pitchfork + supervised sidekiq in one container)
• db — pgvector/pgvector:pg16 (Discourse schema requires the vector extension)
• redis — redis:7

Deploy (via @shrug/coolify on shrug-coolify-root → worker2)

1. createComposeApplication from this private repo (build_pack=dockercompose)
2. upsertApplicationEnvs — set the vars from .env.example (real values)
3. setComposeDomains — {"web": "https://<temp-domain>:80"} (temp sslip.io/nip.io)
4. deploy (instantDeploy) → poll getDeployment to finished
5. First-boot: MIGRATE_ON_BOOT=1 runs db:migrate on the empty DB → clean Discourse

Restore the backup

Backup file must sit in the container at /shared/backups/default/.

# on worker2 (via a worker2 cfgmgmt/exec model): copy backup into the web container's /shared
docker cp <backup>.tar.gz $(docker ps -qf name=web):/shared/backups/default/
docker exec <web> discourse enable_restore
docker exec <web> discourse restore <backup>.tar.gz
docker exec <web> discourse disable_restore
# hostname differs from bedfordma.today -> remap + rebake:
docker exec <web> discourse remap bedfordma.today <temp-domain>
docker exec <web> discourse rake posts:rebake

Verify (GREEN criteria)

• Web loads at the temp domain; can log in
• Posts / users / categories / uploads all present (uploads render, not broken links)
• discourse doctor clean-ish

Known risks to watch on first deploy

• :443 binding — the image has SSL templates baked (DISABLE_LETSENCRYPT=1). We only expose :80 and terminate TLS at Coolify's proxy; confirm the container doesn't crash trying :443.
• Backup dir — restore only sees /shared/backups/default/ (exact path).
• DB superuser — restore drops/recreates schema + CREATE EXTENSION; discourse role is POSTGRES_USER (superuser) so that's covered.