bitnamicharts/discourse repository overview

⁠Discourse® packaged by Bitnami

Discourse is an open source discussion platform with built-in moderation and governance systems that let discussion communities protect themselves from bad actors even without official moderators.

Overview of Discourse®⁠

Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

⁠ TL;DR

helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/discourse

⁠ Introduction

This chart bootstraps a Discourse⁠ deployment on a Kubernetes⁠ cluster using the Helm⁠ package manager.

It also packages Bitnami Postgresql⁠ and Bitnami Redis®⁠ which are required as databases for the Discourse application.

⁠ Before you begin

• Kubernetes 1.23+
• Helm 3.8.0+
• PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure
• ReadWriteMany volumes for deployment scaling

⁠ Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/discourse

The command deploys Discourse on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration. The Parameters⁠ section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

⁠ Configuration and installation details

This section describes credentials, configuration, and other installation options.

⁠ Resource requests and limits

Bitnami charts allow setting resource requests and limits for all containers inside the chart deployment. These are inside the resources value (check parameter table). Setting requests is essential for production workloads and these should be adapted to your specific use case.

To make this process easier, the chart contains the resourcesPreset values, which automatically sets the resources section according to different presets. Check these presets in the bitnami/common chart⁠. However, in production workloads using resourcesPreset is discouraged as it may not fully adapt to your specific needs. Find more information on container resource management in the official Kubernetes documentation⁠.

⁠ Rolling VS Immutable tags⁠

It is strongly recommended to use immutable tags in a production environment. This ensures your deployment does not change automatically if the same tag is updated with a different image.

Bitnami will release a new chart updating its containers if a new version of the main container, significant changes, or critical vulnerabilities exist.

⁠ Update credentials

Bitnami charts configure credentials at first boot. Any further change in the secrets or credentials require manual intervention. Follow these instructions:

• Update the user password following the upstream documentation⁠
• Update the password secret with the new values (replace the SECRET_NAME, PASSWORD and SMTP_PASSWORD placeholders)

kubectl create secret generic SECRET_NAME --from-literal=discourse-password=PASSWORD --from-literal=smtp-password=SMTP_PASSWORD --dry-run -o yaml | kubectl apply -f -

⁠ Setting up replication

By default, this Chart only deploys a single pod running Discourse. Should you want to increase the number of replicas, you may follow these simple steps to ensure everything works smoothly:

1. Create a conventional release, that will be scaled later:

   helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/discourse
   ...
   

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   Note: You need to substitute the placeholders REGISTRY_NAME and REPOSITORY_NAME with a reference to your Helm chart registry and repository. For example, in the case of Bitnami, you need to use REGISTRY_NAME=registry-1.docker.io and REPOSITORY_NAME=bitnamicharts.

2. Wait for the release to complete and Discourse to be running successfully.

   $ kubectl get pods
   NAME                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   my-release-discourse-744c48dd97-wx5h9   2/2     Running   0          5m11s
   my-release-postgresql-0                 1/1     Running   0          5m10s
   my-release-redis-master-0               1/1     Running   0          5m11s
   

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3. Perform an upgrade specifying the number of replicas and the credentials used.

   helm upgrade my-release --set replicaCount=2,discourse.skipInstall=true oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/discourse
   

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   Note: You need to substitute the placeholders REGISTRY_NAME and REPOSITORY_NAME with a reference to your Helm chart registry and repository. For example, in the case of Bitnami, you need to use REGISTRY_NAME=registry-1.docker.io and REPOSITORY_NAME=bitnamicharts.

   Note that for this to work properly, you need to provide ReadWriteMany PVCs. If you don't have a provisioner for this type of storage, we recommend that you install the NFS provisioner chart (with the correct parameters, such as persistence.enabled=true and persistence.size=10Gi) and map it to a RWO volume.

   Then you can deploy Discourse chart using the proper parameters:

   persistence.storageClass=nfs
   postgresql.primary.persistence.storageClass=nfs
   

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⁠ Installing plugins

You can install custom Discourse plugins during the release installation listing the desired plugin repositories via the discourse.plugins parameter. For example:

discourse:
  plugins:
  - https://github.com/discourse/discourse-oauth2-basic

⁠ Sidecars

If you have a need for additional containers to run within the same pod as Discourse (e.g. metrics or logging exporter), you can do so via the sidecars config parameter. Simply define your container according to the Kubernetes container spec.

sidecars:
- name: your-image-name
  image: your-image
  imagePullPolicy: Always
  ports:
  - name: portname
   containerPort: 1234

If these sidecars export extra ports, you can add extra port definitions using the service.extraPorts value:

service:
...
  extraPorts:
  - name: extraPort
    port: 11311
    targetPort: 11311

⁠ Using an external database

Sometimes you may want to have Discourse connect to an external database rather than installing one inside your cluster, e.g. to use a managed database service, or use run a single database server for all your applications. To do this, the chart allows you to specify credentials for an external database under the externalDatabase parameter⁠. You should also disable the PostgreSQL installation with the postgresql.enabled option. For example with the following parameters:

postgresql.enabled=false
externalDatabase.host=myexternalhost
externalDatabase.user=myuser
externalDatabase.password=mypassword
externalDatabase.postgresUser=postgres
externalDatabase.postgresPassword=rootpassword
externalDatabase.database=mydatabase
externalDatabase.port=5432

Note also that if you disable PostgreSQL per above you MUST supply values for the externalDatabase connection.

In case the database already contains data from a previous Discourse installation, you need to set the discourse.skipInstall parameter to true. Otherwise, the container would execute the installation wizard and could modify the existing data in the database. This parameter force the container to not execute the Discourse installation wizard.

Similarly, you can specify an external Redis® instance rather than installing one inside your cluster. First, you may disable the Redis® installation with the redis.enabled option. As aforementioned, used the provided parameters to provide data about your instance:

redis.enabled=false
externalRedis.host=myexternalhost
externalRedis.password=mypassword
externalRedis.port=5432

⁠ Gateway API

This chart provides support for exposing Discourse using the Gateway API⁠ and its HTTPRoute resource. If you have a Gateway controller installed on your cluster, such as APISIX, Contour, Envoy Gateway, NGINX Gateway Fabric or Kong Ingress Controller you can utilize the Gateway controller to serve your application. To enable Gateway API integration, set httpRoute.enabled to true. The Gateway to be used can be customized by setting the httpRoute.parentRefs parameter. By default, it will reference a Gateway named gateway in the same namespace as the release.

You can specify the list of hostnames to be mapped to the deployment using the httpRoute.hostnames parameter. Additionally, you can customize the rules used to route the traffic to the service by modifying the httpRoute.matches and httpRoute.filters parameters or adding new rules using the httpRoute.extraRules parameter.

⁠ Ingress

This chart provides support for Ingress resources. If you have an ingress controller installed on your cluster, such as nginx-ingress-controller⁠ or contour⁠ you can utilize the ingress controller to serve your application. To enable Ingress integration, set ingress.enabled to true.

The most common scenario is to have one host name mapped to the deployment. In this case, the ingress.hostname property can be used to set the host name. The ingress.tls parameter can be used to add the TLS configuration for this host.

However, it is also possible to have more than one host. To facilitate this, the ingress.extraHosts parameter (if available) can be set with the host names specified as an array. The ingress.extraTLS parameter (if available) can also be used to add the TLS configuration for extra hosts.

Adding the TLS parameter (where available) will cause the chart to generate HTTPS URLs, and the application will be available on port 443. The actual TLS secrets do not have to be generated by this chart. However, if TLS is enabled, the Ingress record will not work until the TLS secret exists.

Learn more about Ingress controllers⁠.

⁠ Securing traffic using TLS

This chart facilitates the creation of TLS secrets for use with the Ingress controller (although this is not mandatory). There are several common use cases:

• Generate certificate secrets based on chart parameters.
• Enable externally generated certificates.
• Manage application certificates via an external service (like cert-manager⁠).
• Create self-signed certificates within the chart (if supported).

In the first two cases, a certificate and a key are needed. Files are expected in .pem format.

Here is an example of a certificate file:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIID6TCCAtGgAwIBAgIJAIaCwivkeB5EMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAMFYxCzAJBgNV
...
jScrvkiBO65F46KioCL9h5tDvomdU1aqpI/CBzhvZn1c0ZTf87tGQR8NK7v7
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Here is an example of a certificate key:

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEogIBAAKCAQEAvLYcyu8f3skuRyUgeeNpeDvYBCDcgq+LsWap6zbX5f8oLqp4
...
wrj2wDbCDCFmfqnSJ+dKI3vFLlEz44sAV8jX/kd4Y6ZTQhlLbYc=
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

• If using Helm to manage the certificates based on the parameters, copy these values into the certificate and key values for a given *.ingress.secrets entry.
• If managing TLS secrets separately, it is necessary to create a TLS secret with name INGRESS_HOSTNAME-tls (where INGRESS_HOSTNAME is a placeholder to be replaced with the hostname you set using the *.ingress.hostname parameter).
• If your cluster has a cert-manager⁠ add-on to automate the management and issuance of TLS certificates, add to *.ingress.annotations the corresponding ones⁠ for cert-manager.
• If using self-signed certificates created by Helm, set both *.ingress.tls and *.ingress.selfSigned to true.

⁠ Setting Pod's affinity

This chart allows you to set your custom affinity using the affinity parameter. Find more information about Pod's affinity in the kubernetes documentation⁠.

As an alternative, you can use of the preset configurations for pod affinity, pod anti-affinity, and node affinity available at the bitnami/common⁠ chart. To do so, set the podAffinityPreset, podAntiAffinityPreset, or nodeAffinityPreset parameters.

⁠ Backup and restore

To back up and restore Helm chart deployments on Kubernetes, you need to back up the persistent volumes from the source deployment and attach them to a new deployment using Velero⁠, a Kubernetes backup/restore tool. Find the instructions for using Velero in this guide⁠.

⁠ FIPS parameters

The FIPS parameters only have effect if you are using images from the Bitnami Secure Images catalog⁠.

For more information on this new feature, please refer to the FIPS Compliance section⁠.

⁠ Persistence

The Bitnami Discourse⁠ image stores the Discourse data and configurations at the /bitnami path of the container.

Persistent Volume Claims are used to keep the data across deployments. This is known to work in GCE, AWS, and minikube. See the Parameters⁠ section to configure the PVC or to disable persistence.

⁠ Parameters

The following subsections list global, common, and component-specific parameters.

⁠ Global parameters

⁠ Common parameters

⁠ Discourse Common parameters

Note: the README for this chart is longer than the DockerHub length limit of 25000, so it has been trimmed. The full README can be found at https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-tanzu/bitnami-secure-images/bitnami-secure-images/services/bsi-app-doc/apps-charts-discourse-index.html⁠