Possible to use ghost install with only some parameters?

Henry_Junior · September 17, 2023, 1:45am

I was hoping to have ghost install prompt me for the URL if I supply some parameters (but leave out the URL paramater) However, it doesn’t appear to work that way, or I’ve not figured out how to get that to work. Figured I’d confirm if my experience is intentional? Or, if maybe there’s something I am doing that’s preventing the ghost installer from asking for a URL based on what I am supplying:

cd /var/www/ghost && ghost install --setup-mysql --setup-nginx --setup-ssl --setup-systemd --dbhost localhost --dbuser root --dbpass $mysql_password --dbname ghost_prod --start

Thanks!

vikaspotluri123 · September 17, 2023, 6:16am

When I run the command locally, I get prompted to provide my URL

.../ghost/install-test$ ghost install --setup-mysql --setup-nginx --setup-ssl --setup-systemd --dbhost localhost --dbuser root --dbpass $mysql_password --dbname ghost_prod --start

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Running in development mode


✔ Checking system Node.js version - found v18.17.1
✔ Checking current folder permissions
✔ Checking memory availability
✔ Checking free space
✔ Checking for latest Ghost version
✔ Setting up install directory
✔ Downloading and installing Ghost v5.63.0
✔ Finishing install process
? Enter your blog URL: (http://localhost:2368)

Henry_Junior · September 17, 2023, 4:16pm

tldr I think I need to figure out how to start ghost install from a script, that’s running in an interactive SSH shell, running on a VM in interactive mode. It appears that Ghost install thinks it’s running in a non interactive shell the way I am using it below.

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing. I suspect the issue I’m hitting must be due to the way I’m trying to execute the ghost install command within a shell.

Some background context: I am trying to make it easy for others to install Ghost on a free-tier Google micro-instance and have started this project which is very close to working:

I run the setup script (sh gcloud_ghost_instancer.sh) on my local machine. It does a bunch of stuff to create and setup the google VM. Once the VM is created it 1) the script SSH’s in to the VM using a service-account with sudo access via an interactive shell 2) downloads another script on to the VM 3) runs the downloaded script to prepare the machine for, and install, Ghost:

ssh -t -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i $HOME/.ssh/service_account_key-${INSTANCE_NAME} service-account@$INSTANCE_IP <<'ENDSSH'

        # Download the installer script from GitHub
        curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/danielraffel/gcloud_ghost_instancer/main/install_on_server.sh

        # Make it executable and run it
        chmod +x install_on_server.sh
        sh ./install_on_server.sh
ENDSSH

The script running on the server (install_on_server.sh) is running inside the SSH shell. As alluded to in my original comment, I had started writing this script by passing variables to the ghost installer (minus the URL) hoping it would trigger just that part of the installer for a user to configure (and automate the rest). But, when I had a long string of parameters, I kept getting an error about not passing --URL. Then, when I removed all parameters and just ran Ghost Install I started getting errors that the “content folder is not owned by the current user ghost install” This is confusing since you see below the folders are setup correctly. However, this is is running inside a shell, on a VM, by a service-account with sudo access. These are the parts of the script which seem to not be working correctly.

# Install Ghost CLI
sudo npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

#Make a new directory called ghost, set its permissions, then navigate to it:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/ghost
sudo chown service-account:service-account /var/www/ghost
sudo chmod 775 /var/www/ghost

# Navigate to the website folder and install Ghost:
cd /var/www/ghost && ghost install

I am not really sure what’s going on but my hunches are:

the Ghost CLI is installing an account like ‘ghost’ and for whatever reason not able to configure the folder correctly?
And, maybe, the fact that this script is running in an ssh shell triggers ghost install to think it does not have interactive behavior defined?

Any ideas or suggestions to try are greatly appreciated!

Here’s output from the ghost installer:

] Getting download information [started]
[16:35:07] Getting download information [completed]
[16:35:07] Downloading [started]
[16:35:11] Downloading [completed]
[16:35:11] Installing dependencies [started]
[16:35:12] → yarn install v1.22.19
[16:35:12] → [1/5] Validating package.json...
[16:35:12] → [2/5] Resolving packages...
[16:35:14] → [3/5] Fetching packages...
[16:36:00] → [4/5] Linking dependencies...
[16:36:26] → [5/5] Building fresh packages...
[16:36:28] → info This package requires node-gyp, which is not currently installed. Yarn will attempt to automatically install it. If this fails, you can run "yarn global add node-gyp" to manually install it.
[16:36:29] → [1/4] Resolving packages...
[16:36:35] → [2/4] Fetching packages...
[16:36:36] → [3/4] Linking dependencies...
[16:36:37] → [4/4] Building fresh packages...
[16:36:37] → success Installed "node-gyp@9.4.0" with binaries:
[16:36:37] →       - node-gyp
[16:36:38] → info This module is OPTIONAL, you can safely ignore this error
[16:36:41] → success Saved lockfile.
[16:36:41] → Done in 89.01s.
[16:36:41] Installing dependencies [completed]
[16:36:41] Downloading and installing Ghost v5.63.0 [completed]
[16:36:41] Finishing install process [started]
[16:36:41] Linking latest Ghost and recording versions [started]
[16:36:41] Linking latest Ghost and recording versions [completed]
[16:36:41] Linking latest Casper [started]
[16:36:41] Linking latest Casper [completed]
[16:36:41] Finishing install process [completed]
[16:36:41] Configuring Ghost [started]
[16:36:41] Configuring Ghost [failed]
[16:36:41] → Prompts have been disabled, all options must be provided via command line flags
[16:36:41] Setting up instance [started]
[16:36:41] Setting up instance [failed]
[16:36:41] → The "url" argument must be of type string. Received undefined
[16:36:41] Setting up "ghost" system user [started]
[16:36:41] Creating "ghost" system user [started]
+ sudo useradd --system --user-group ghost
[16:36:41] Creating "ghost" system user [completed]
[16:36:41] Giving "ghost" user ownership of the /content/ directory [started]
+ sudo chown -R ghost:ghost /var/www/ghost/content
[16:36:41] Giving "ghost" user ownership of the /content/ directory [completed]
[16:36:41] Setting up "ghost" system user [completed]
[16:36:41] Setting up "ghost" mysql user [started]
[16:36:41] Setting up "ghost" mysql user [skipped]
[16:36:41] Setting up Nginx [started]
[16:36:41] Setting up Nginx [failed]
[16:36:41] → The "url" argument must be of type string. Received undefined
[16:36:41] Setting up SSL [started]
[16:36:41] Setting up SSL [skipped]
[16:36:41] → Nginx setup task failed, skipping SSL setup
[16:36:41] Starting Ghost [started]
[16:36:41] Starting Ghost [failed]
[16:36:41] → The content folder is not owned by the current user.
Ensure the content folder has correct permissions and try again.
One or more errors occurred.

1) SystemError

Message: Prompts have been disabled, all options must be provided via command line flags


2) undefined

TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: The "url" argument must be of type string. Received undefined

3) undefined

TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: The "url" argument must be of type string. Received undefined

4) SystemError

Message: The content folder is not owned by the current user.
Ensure the content folder has correct permissions and try again.

Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v22.04.3 LTS
    Node Version: v18.17.1
    Ghost Version: 5.63.0
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.24.2
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost install'

Try running ghost doctor to check your system for known issues.

You can always refer to https://ghost.org/docs/ghost-cli/ for troubleshooting.

Love open source? We’re hiring JavaScript Engineers to work on Ghost full-time.
https://careers.ghost.org

- Inspecting operating system
- Checking for deprecations

[16:36:42] Checking system Node.js version [started]
[16:36:42] Checking system Node.js version - found v18.17.1 [title changed]
[16:36:42] Checking system Node.js version - found v18.17.1 [completed]
[16:36:42] Ensuring user is not logged in as ghost user [started]
[16:36:42] Ensuring user is not logged in as ghost user [skipped]
[16:36:42] Checking if logged in user is directory owner [started]
[16:36:42] Checking if logged in user is directory owner [skipped]
[16:36:42] Checking current folder permissions [started]
[16:36:42] Checking current folder permissions [completed]
[16:36:42] Validating config [started]
[16:36:42] Validating config [failed]
[16:36:42] → Config file is not valid JSON
[16:36:42] Checking content folder ownership [started]
[16:36:42] Checking content folder ownership [completed]
[16:36:42] Checking memory availability [started]
[16:36:42] Checking memory availability [completed]
[16:36:42] Checking binary dependencies [started]
[16:36:42] Checking binary dependencies [completed]
One or more errors occurred.
Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v22.04.3 LTS
    Node Version: v18.17.1
    Ghost Version: 5.63.0
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.24.2
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost start'

1) Validating config

Error detected in the production configuration.

Message: Config file is not valid JSON


Try running ghost doctor to check your system for known issues.

You can always refer to https://ghost.org/docs/ghost-cli/ for troubleshooting.

SSH’d in to check the directory structure. The service-account already owns /var/www/ghost/ and has read-write-execute permissions, so it should be able to run ghost install without issues related to permissions. It can add users and directories within /ghost as needed.

cd /var/www/ghost/
ls -la
total 20
drwxrwxr-x  4 service-account service-account 4096 Sep 17 16:36 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 root            root            4096 Sep 17 16:35 ..
-rw-rw-r--  1 service-account service-account   83 Sep 17 16:36 .ghost-cli
drwxrwxr-x 11 ghost           ghost           4096 Sep 17 16:35 content
lrwxrwxrwx  1 service-account service-account   30 Sep 17 16:36 current -> /var/www/ghost/versions/5.63.0
drwxrwxr-x  3 service-account service-account 4096 Sep 17 16:35 versions

Based on that…

Prompts have been disabled, all options must be provided via command line flags: The ghost installer appears to think it’s running in a non-interactive session, and needs to be provided all the necessary options as command line arguments.
The "url" argument must be of type string. Received undefined: This explains why I’m getting errors that the url parameter was not set during the installation, and it’s a required parameter.

So…now to figure out how to get ghost install to run the way I am trying, within a shell, in an interactive mode. Open to ideas, have tried things like starting the script on the server with bash -i (which didn’t work.)

Here’s ghost doctor feedback

ghost doctor

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https://careers.ghost.org


✔ Checking system Node.js version - found v18.17.1
ℹ Ensuring user is not logged in as ghost user [skipped]
ℹ Checking if logged in user is directory owner [skipped]
✔ Checking current folder permissions
✖ Validating config
✔ Checking content folder ownership
✔ Checking memory availability
✔ Checking binary dependencies
✔ Checking free space
One or more errors occurred.

1) Validating config

Error detected in the production configuration.

Message: Config file is not valid JSON

Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v22.04.3 LTS
    Node Version: v18.17.1
    Ghost Version: 5.63.0
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.24.2
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost doctor'

Try running ghost doctor to check your system for known issues.

You can always refer to https://ghost.org/docs/ghost-cli/ for troubleshooting.

Since the installer didn’t get to creating “config.production.json” there’s nothing there yet which is what Ghost Doctor is saying

ls
content  current  versions

Henry_Junior · September 17, 2023, 5:21pm

Henry_Junior:

The script running on the server (install_on_server.sh) is running inside the SSH shell. As alluded to in my original comment, I had started writing this script by passing variables to the ghost installer (minus the URL) hoping it would trigger just that part of the installer for a user to configure (and automate the rest). But, when I had a long string of parameters, I kept getting an error about not passing --URL. Then, when I removed all parameters and just ran Ghost Install I started getting errors that the “content folder is not owned by the current user ghost install” This is confusing since you see below the folders are setup correctly. However, this is is running inside a shell, on a VM, by a service-account with sudo access. These are the parts of the script which seem to not be working correctly.
# Install Ghost CLI
sudo npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

#Make a new directory called ghost, set its permissions, then navigate to it:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/ghost
sudo chown service-account:service-account /var/www/ghost
sudo chmod 775 /var/www/ghost

# Navigate to the website folder and install Ghost:
cd /var/www/ghost && ghost install

Update 1: Golly gee…turns out I did need to force pseudo terminal allocation mode.

However, sometimes one -t option isn’t enough and we need to use two -t options or -tt for short. The -tt option forces tty allocation even if ssh has no local tty. This is useful for running commands with stdin redirection on the remote machine:

$ ssh -tt user@host 'cat file.txt' < input.txt
Copy
Overall, using -t forces a pseudo-TTY allocation and thereby usually resolves the error.

while this does work to get ghost install to run it is now behaving very awkwardly (eg screen scrolls funny and entering text is challenging):

ssh -tt -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i $HOME/.ssh/service_account_key-${INSTANCE_NAME} service-account@$INSTANCE_IP

I’ve tried running in screen to see if that might fix things and that is introducing its own issues (eg carriage return is non responsive at blog URL.)

Updated 2: I thought I’d try running in tmux but it also has unexpected behavior and the Ghost install CLI bounces around on the screen and is non responsive when I enter a manual URL.

# Open a tmux session
tmux new-session -d -s ghost_install

# Download the installer script from GitHub

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/danielraffel/gcloud_ghost_instancer/main/install_on_server.sh

# Make it executable

chmod +x install_on_server.sh

# Run the installation script inside the tmux session

tmux send-keys -t ghost_install "sh ./install_on_server.sh" C-m

# Attach to tmux session to view progress

tmux attach -t ghost_install

Update 3: Filed a bug on the CLI in the hopes that maybe there’s something they can do. Ghost install thinks it’s running in a non interactive shell · Issue #1788 · TryGhost/Ghost-CLI · GitHub

Henry_Junior · September 18, 2023, 4:01am

Figured I’d just work around the limitations. Ended up just front loading some questions to use to configure the parameters set when running Ghost Install. This doesn’t fix the issue I faced but does work around it. I’ve finished up v1 of a Google Cloud VM installer for Ghost which customizes the setup a bit: