this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Lemmy Support

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Support / questions about Lemmy.

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I've installed Lemmy via ansible, but I figured out that there are problems with emails and after I've created a user, no verification email came, no login is possible and now I have a ghost account I want to delete.

Because I couldn't find an UI element to purge users in the admin panel, I want to do it over postgresql, but I have no idea how to connect to the Lemmy database over a docker container, only thing I've found is to backup/restore the whole database:

docker-compose exec postgres pg_dumpall -c -U lemmy | gzip > lemmy_dump_date +%Y-%m-%d""%H%M_%S.sql.gz

Thank you for your help.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Try to get a bash prompt inside the dB container, then you can run CLI postgres commands from inside the container.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

How exactly? The recommendations of other people here didn't work.

EDIT: Found a solution. Check other posts to see how it works.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You might be able to just run docker-compose exec postgres psql to drop into a shell (you may still need to define the user with -U lemmy)

If you're trying to connect with ane external tool though, you'll need to expose the ports temporarily, which I'm not sure if you can do without restarting the container (after adding the exposed ports to the docket compose file, like 127.0.0.1:5432:5432)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

After executing docker exec -it lemmymydomain_postgres_1 psql

I've got the error:

psql: error: connection to server on socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432" failed: FATAL: role "root" does not exist

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Oh yeah, try specifying the hostname as localhost (I think it's -h, but --help will confirm it). Psql tries by default to connect to that socket, but in docker it does use it.

Basically, you'll need to specify the hostname and user (and if port, which should just be default, then -p 5432)

It should be

docker exec -it lemmymydomain_postgres_1 psql -h localhost -U lemmy (dbname)

Keeping in mind that you'll need to have the right user and database name, assuming (based on your original comment) lemmy being the username and the db name might also be lemmy

Edit: this should btw just get you into the db, I have no idea of its a good idea or not to delete a user directly from the db, it might cause issues, but I don't have experience with it, but just generally use postgres in docker with other projects

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I found a solution here

A warning to people who have the same problem:

On the website there is a command, which will purge all unverified account. If your admin account wasn't verified, it will be purged, too.

Thanks a lot for your help :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Glad you solved it! Definitely sounds like a better solution than playing around in the db

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well, it is playing around with the db 😀 ... and it could even destroy the whole instance if people don't see the warning I've posted there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

if you already have the container up you can run "docker exec -it postgres bash". this will open the shell of the postgres container

in that i think you can run postgres commands with "psql"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

docker exec -it postgres bash

After executing this command and executing psql, I got this error:

psql: error: connection to server on socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432" failed: FATAL: role "root" does not exist

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

psql: error: connection to server on socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432" failed: FATAL: role "root" does not exist

try

psql -U postgres

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

psql -U postgres

No luck with this comman :(

psql: error: connection to server on socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432" failed: FATAL: role "postgres" does not exist

But is it the right docker container? The name of the container I try to connect is lemmymydomaintld_postgres_1

Seems pretty hard to delete a user this way. Do you know an easier way by any chance?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yea im p sure cuz otherwise psql wont work

try

psql -U lemmy

i havent used lemmy, just know a bit of docker

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I found a solution here

A warning to people who have the same problem:

On the website there is a command, which will purge all unverified account. If your admin account wasn't verified, it will be purged, too.

Thanks a lot for your help :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hope the Lemmy devs sort out email verification soon. We had so many problems we switched it off at futurology.today & went with limiting new sign-ups to a set amount per hour to combat bots instead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What exactly was the issue with your verification system?

Currently the emails get out. At least I can see people creating accounts and posting stuff.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What exactly was the issue with your verification system?

Numerous issues the site dev couldn't fully understand after hours of investigating. We've switched off email verification until the Lemmy devs fix this in an update. Additionally 2FA is often broken too & awaiting a fix.

https://ani.social/post/46684

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

What a big no-go, if you could lock out yourself as an admin.

That's such a sloppy craftsmanship.