Changes to Ghost support

nick

justincox Yes, please see the OP at the start of the thread.

Because of this situation we've decided to temporarily remove Ghost from our officially supported apps.

Still no ETA at this time but we will make an announcement here.

justincox

nick Are the steps from December still accurate or are there newer versions to follow?

nick

justincox I think so, though if you have any issues feel free to open a support ticket.

nick

THIS GUIDE IS DEPRECIATED AS OF GHOST 5.71.0 SINCE IT DROPPED NODE 16 SUPPORT, PLEASE USE THE DEDICATED INSTALL GUIDE.

For anyone interested - these instructions should get a Ghost/MySQL instance up and running in production mode on the Opalstack platform. Here are the variables you need to know in order to use the guide (replace them with the values you choose to assign to each):

MYGHOST = new shell user name
GHOSTAPP = nginx proxy app 1, note assigned port = GAPORT
GHOSTDB = nginx proxy app 2, note assigned port = DBPORT
GHOSTDBNAME = ghost database name
GHOSTDBUSER = ghost db user name
GHOSTDBUSERPWD = ghost db user password
GHOSTDBROOTPWD = ghost db root user password
YOURDOMAIN.COM = domain to use for the app

Pre-installation

Create a new shell user, e.g. MYGHOST
Create two NXINX proxy apps GHOSTAPP and GHOSTDB, noting the assigned ports for each
Create a site record in dashboard assigning GHOSTAPP and YOURDOMAIN.COM, enabling HTTPS too
SSH to your server using shell user MYGHOST

Setup MySQL Instance

**#Create the MySQL config file**
cd ~/apps/GHOSTDB
mkdir -p {etc,var,tmp}
echo -e "[client]\nport = DBPORT\nsocket = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/var/mysql.sock\n\n[mysqld]\nport = DBPORT\nsocket = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/var/mysql.sock\ntmpdir = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/tmp\ndatadir = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/data\ninnodb_log_group_home_dir = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/data\nlog_error = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/maria.log\npid_file = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/var/pid\nsql_mode = STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,NO_ZERO_DATE,ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION\n\n[mysqld_safe]\nlog-error = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/maria.log\npid-file = /home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/var/pid" > ~/apps/GHOSTDB/etc/my.cnf

**#Download and setup MySQL**
wget https://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-8.0/mysql-8.0.32-el7-x86_64.tar.gz
tar xzf mysql-8.0.32-el7-x86_64.tar.gz --strip-components=1
~/apps/GHOSTDB/bin/mysqld --defaults-file=/home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTDB/etc/my.cnf --initialize-insecure --user=$USER --datadir=$PWD/data --tmpdir=$PWD/tmp

**#Start the MySQL instance, login and set up root and new user:**
nohup $HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file=$HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/etc/my.cnf --socket=$HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/var/mysql.sock > $HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/nohup.out 2>&1 &
~/apps/GHOSTDB/bin/mysql -P DBPORT -S $HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/var/mysql.sock -u root
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'GHOSTDBROOTPWD';
create database GHOSTDBNAME;
create user 'GHOSTDBUSER'@'localhost' identified by 'GHOSTDBUSERPWD';
grant usage on *.* to 'ghostdbuser'@'localhost';
grant all on GHOSTDBNAME.* to 'GHOSTDBUSER'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

**#How to start/stop database**
Start: nohup $HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file=$HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/etc/my.cnf --socket=$HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/var/mysql.sock > $HOME/apps/ghostdb/nohup.out 2>&1 &
Stop: $HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/bin/mysqladmin -u root -P DBPORT -S $HOME/apps/GHOSTDB/var/mysql.sock -p shutdown

Setup Ghost Instance w/MySQL -- NOTE: Node v16 support has been dropped as of Ghost 5.71.0 so you will have to compile Node v18.12.1 instead, see the updated official guide here.

**#Get and unpack Nodejs v16.20.0**
cd ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/
wget https://nodejs.org/download/release/latest-v16.x/node-v16.20.0-linux-x64.tar.xz
tar xf node-v16.20.0-linux-x64.tar.xz --strip 1 -C $PWD

**#Export for Node PATH, update NPM and install some Ghost requirements via SCL**
export PATH=$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/bin:$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin:$PATH
scl enable devtoolset-10 -- npm install -g npm@9.8.1
scl enable devtoolset-10 -- npm install --prefix=~/apps/GHOSTAPP @vscode/sqlite3
scl enable devtoolset-10 -- npm install --prefix=~/apps/GHOSTAPP ghost-cli@latest

**#Install the Ghost instance**
mkdir ./instance && cd ./instance
~/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin/ghost install local --port GAPORT --log file --no-start

**#Replace the sqlite3 package**
rm -r ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance/current/node_modules/sqlite3
cp -r ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/@vscode/sqlite3 ~/apps/ghostapp/instance/current/node_modules/

**#Create the Ghost config file for production, disable default config files**
echo -e '{ \n\t"url": "https://YOURDOMAIN.COM", \n\t"server": { \n\t\t"host": "127.0.0.1", \n\t\t"port": GAPORT }, \n\t"database": { \n\t\t"client": "mysql", \n\t\t"connection": { \n\t\t\t"host": "127.0.0.1", \n\t\t\t"port": DBPORT, \n\t\t\t"user": "GHOSTDBUSER", \n\t\t\t"password": "GHOSTDBUSERPWD", \n\t\t\t"database": "GHOSTDBNAME" \n\t\t} \n\t}, \n\t"paths": { \n\t\t"contentPath": "/home/MYGHOST/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance/content/" \n\t}, \n\t"logging": { \n\t\t"level": "info", \n\t\t"rotation": { \n\t\t\t"enabled": true \n\t\t}, \n\t\t"transports": [\n\t\t\t"file", \n\t\t\t"stdout"\n\t\t], \n\t\t"path": "/home/MYGHOST/logs/apps/GHOSTAPP/"\n\t} \n}' > ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance/config.production.json
find ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance/versions/X.XX.X/core/shared/config/env/ -type f -name "*.json" -exec sh -c 'mv "$1" "${1%.json}.json-backup"' _ {} \;
**#NOTE**: Replace X.XX.X with the version number that got installed when you used 'ghost install' prior

**#Create start and stop scripts**
echo '#!/bin/bash' > ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/start; echo "PATH=~/apps/GHOSTAPP/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/start; echo "NODE_ENV=production ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin/ghost start -d ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance --no-setup-linux-user" >> ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/start; chmod +x ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/start; echo '#!/bin/bash' > ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/stop; echo "PATH=~/apps/GHOSTAPP/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/stop; echo "~/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin/ghost stop -d ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance --no-setup-linux-user" >> ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/stop; chmod +x ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/stop

**#Start Ghost**
~/apps/GHOSTAPP/start

Post setup instructions

**#Set domain you want to serve the Ghost app with**
cd ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance
~/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin/ghost config url https://YOURDOMAIN.COM
~/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin/ghost restart

**#Immediately visit your Ghost admin URL and create the admin user when it's available, e.g.**
https://YOURDOMAIN.COM/ghost/
**#NOTE**: If this process appears to stall, after about 15-20 seconds or so just click the black button you just did again and it should take you to a login page. I haven't seen any problems that stem from this issue yet and the logs were not clear why this was happening.

**#Add cron to keep the app up**
(crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo "0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/start > /dev/null 2>&1") | crontab -

**#How to start/stop/restart Ghost app**
~/apps/GHOSTAPP/start
~/apps/GHOSTAPP/stop
export PATH=$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/bin:$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin:$PATH && cd ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance && ~/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin/ghost restart

**#Don't forget to setup mail!**
https://ghost.org/docs/config/#mail (note: you have to restart Ghost after modifying any of the config json files)

Updates and maintenance

To run the ghost command for updates and other maintenance tasks, first set your shell path by running the following command:

export PATH=$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/bin:$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin:$PATH

You'll then be able to run ghost for updates etc, for example:

export PATH=$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/bin:$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin:$PATH
cd $HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/instance
ghost backup --no-setup-linux-user
ghost update --no-setup-linux-user

More ghost commands are documented at: https://ghost.org/docs/ghost-cli/

I hope this has been helpful in leui of the current Ghost installer issues! 🙂🙂🙂

sean

nick thanks, Nick!

Jamie

nick Awesome! Thank you!

justincox

Thanks for the work, Nick!

nick

Hi everyone, I made some significant updates to the MySQL section of the build details as it was reportedly showing versioning issues with the original instructions. It might be better to start from scratch if you are not comfortable updating an existing Ghost app that was using the old DB method if you've already set everything up. As always, feel free to let us know if you are having any issues and we will happily help 🙂

justincox

Ghost has been running well, but over the weekend, I updated from 5.44.0 to 5.46.0 and everything broke. Working with the Ghost developer forum, it seems there are a few things amiss with the Opalstack install. I don't know if it's because I'm on a shared stack, or if it's a result of the install settings.

Essentially, the main content folder is not being respected. Files are uploaded and stored in the versions folder, which means upgrading breaks everything. I manually moved the images and files to the current versions folder, but that doesn't solve the problem longterm -- the next software update will just break all the images and links again. The development forum said there might be an issue with file permissions or the config file settings. I tried changing the config file path to the content folder, but it just seems to crash Ghost on the restart.

Any suggestions?

Here's the development forum thread: https://forum.ghost.org/t/upgrading-to-5-46-deleted-routes-and-redirects-and-broke-all-images/38152/7

nick

justincox I will need a bit of time to test this before updating the guide. But I'm wondering, did this happen with a ghost install from my older instructions or using the updated instructions I made on April 12th? In the mean time if your app structure is intact or if you can undo your manual changes, you can try using ghost update --rollback to go back to the working version (if you didn't make a backup beforehand). Then if you open a ticket we may be able to look at troubleshooting update issues.

justincox

nick I realized I misread the previous reply. My installation is working just fine, it's just placing content in the wrong place. Here's what I put in the Ghost forum that hopefully better explains what's going on:

The content path in the config is "paths": { "contentPath": "content/" }, which should point to /home/<user>/apps/ghost_app/instance/content/ since the config file is in /home/<user>/apps/ghost_app/instance/. When I changed it to read the full directory address, Ghost wouldn’t boot.

I manually moved the images, routes, and redirects files into their appropriate places from the /instance/versions/5.44.0/content/ directory. However, I know Ghost is still reading the information from the /instance/versions/5.44.0/content/ directory because I deleted the routes file from there and my routing rules broke when I rebooted Ghost despite them being in the appropriate /instance/content/settings/ directory.

nick

justincox I'm not sure why updating contentPath broke things for you when setting it in the config.production.json file. I just did that for your app and was able to restart it fine, which looks also to have fixed your broken links. The guide has been updated to include the full path here also. Hope this helps!

justincox

Nick, thank you. I'm unsure what I did originally, but it wouldn't boot when I changed the path. I appreciate your help here. This should hopefully keep things correct moving forward.

anjanesh

Any chance ghost will come back as a dropdown option in the applications section - atleast at the upcoming OS upgrade ?
I am a bit overwhelmed with this manual setup.

nick

anjanesh I suspect whenever we push the new OS release that it probably will support MySQL 8+ but I can't confirm that for sure. The instructions I supplied can be mostly copy/paste to completion. Using a find/replace feature of your favorite text editor could easily replace the variables for you in the guide.

justincox

Oooh, what are these coming OS upgrades you speak of??

nick

justincox Nothing official, but eventually we'd like to upgrade our web server operating system.

anjanesh

Any ballpark estimate on time-line for new OS upgrade - I have to decide on VPS now or later.

peter

anjanesh We hope to have our new OS setup ready later this year, but we don't have a set date or month yet.

justincox

Hi OS team! I'm running into trouble upgrading Ghost today. There is a new version of NPM available, but it won't let me install due to the an "unsupported engine." Since NPM won't update, neither will Ghost. I've included the log below for reference.

0 verbose cli /home/spaceghost/apps/ghost_app/bin/node /home/spaceghost/apps/ghost_app/bin/npm
1 info using npm@9.6.4
2 info using node@v16.20.0
3 timing npm:load:whichnode Completed in 1ms
4 timing config:load:defaults Completed in 4ms
5 timing config:load:file:/home/spaceghost/apps/ghost_app/lib/node_modules/npm/npmrc Completed in 2ms
6 timing config:load:builtin Completed in 3ms
7 timing config:load:cli Completed in 5ms
8 timing config:load:env Completed in 1ms
9 timing config:load:project Completed in 1ms
10 timing config:load:file:/home/spaceghost/.npmrc Completed in 0ms
11 timing config:load:user Completed in 0ms
12 timing config:load:file:/home/spaceghost/apps/ghost_app/etc/npmrc Completed in 0ms
13 timing config:load:global Completed in 0ms
14 timing config:load:setEnvs Completed in 1ms
15 timing config:load Completed in 15ms
16 timing npm:load:configload Completed in 16ms
17 timing npm:load:mkdirpcache Completed in 0ms
18 timing npm:load:mkdirplogs Completed in 1ms
19 verbose title npm install npm@10.0.0
20 verbose argv "install" "--global" "npm@10.0.0"
21 timing npm:load:setTitle Completed in 1ms
22 timing config:load:flatten Completed in 2ms
23 timing npm:load:display Completed in 3ms
24 verbose logfile logs-max:10 dir:/home/spaceghost/.npm/_logs/2023-09-03T14_50_02_029Z-
25 verbose logfile /home/spaceghost/.npm/_logs/2023-09-03T14_50_02_029Z-debug-0.log
26 timing npm:load:logFile Completed in 7ms
27 timing npm:load:timers Completed in 0ms
28 timing npm:load:configScope Completed in 0ms
29 timing npm:load Completed in 29ms
30 timing config:load:flatten Completed in 0ms
31 silly logfile done cleaning log files
32 http fetch GET 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/npm 23ms (cache hit)
33 timing command:install Completed in 53ms
34 verbose stack Error: Unsupported engine
34 verbose stack     at Object.checkEngine (/home/spaceghost/apps/ghost_app/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-install-checks/lib/index.js:14:25)
34 verbose stack     at Install.exec (/home/spaceghost/apps/ghost_app/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/commands/install.js:110:16)
34 verbose stack     at async module.exports (/home/spaceghost/apps/ghost_app/lib/node_modules/npm/lib/cli.js:89:5)
35 verbose pkgid npm@10.0.0
36 verbose cwd /home/spaceghost/apps/ghost_app/instance
37 verbose Linux 3.10.0-1160.49.1.el7.x86_64
38 verbose node v16.20.0
39 verbose npm  v9.6.4
40 error code EBADENGINE
41 error engine Unsupported engine
42 error engine Not compatible with your version of node/npm: npm@10.0.0
43 error notsup Not compatible with your version of node/npm: npm@10.0.0
43 error notsup Required: {"node":"^18.17.0 || >=20.5.0"}
43 error notsup Actual:   {"npm":"9.6.4","node":"v16.20.0"}
44 verbose exit 1
45 timing npm Completed in 98ms
46 verbose code 1
47 error A complete log of this run can be found in: /home/spaceghost/.npm/_logs/2023-09-03T14_50_02_029Z-debug-0.log

sean

justincox I suspect the key error is here:

43 error notsup Required: {"node":"^18.17.0 || >=20.5.0"}

The latest version of NodeJS which is both compatible with Ghost and compatible with CentOS 7 is v16.20.2, so the npm that you use will need to be compatible with that version. The newest npm you can use is 9.8.1 which you can install as follows:

cd ~/apps/ghost_app
export PATH=$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/bin:$HOME/apps/GHOSTAPP/node_modules/.bin:$PATH
scl enable devtoolset-10 -- npm install -g npm@9.8.1

I've updated the procedure to use that version.

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