nginx and ssl setup fails due to assuming presence of certain /etc/nginx directories

[20kaushik02]

Summary

The nginx part of the setup process fails as the Ghost CLI relies on the presence of the /etc/nginx/sites-available folder and the SSL part fails due to the reliance on the presence of the /etc/nginx/snippets folder. I assume this reliance is because of how Ubuntu and some other package repositories maintain this convention in their version of nginx in their PPA.

The reliance can be seen here on /etc/nginx/sites-available and sites-enabled and here on /etc/nginx/snippets which throw errors

Reproduce by installing nginx from nginx.org for Ubuntu, or the corresponding distro's pre-built package. Even before running ghost setup or ghost install, you can see that the two folders do not exist. Ghost-CLI does not create these directories either, but assume their presence. This can be fixed by simply creating them with mkdir -p.

The underlying cause is that different package repositories distribute nginx with different configuration patterns. Some have a conf.d/*.conf pattern (official nginx.org release), some have the sites-available, sites-enabled pattern (older releases that follow this Apache-like style), some have neither and have only the default nginx.conf file (RHEL does this, and the core nginx source code has only this as well).

Both problems are solved simply by creating those directories before running ghost, so sudo mkdir -p /etc/nginx/sites-available /etc/nginx/sites-enabled /etc/nginx/snippets resolves this.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install any version of nginx distributed without the /etc/nginx/sites-available and /etc/nginx/snippets folder. For Ubuntu, follow these steps. Logs below are from nginx-1.24.0
2. Run ghost install, or ghost install --no-setup followed by ghost setup

Log file

First, the nginx part:

ghost_server@instance-20240223-1343:~$ cat .ghost/logs/ghost-cli-debug-2024-02-28T20_04_38_506Z.log
Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v22.04.4 LTS
    Node Version: v18.19.1
    Ghost Version: 5.79.6
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.25.3
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost setup'
Message: Command failed: /bin/sh -c sudo -S -p '#node-sudo-passwd#'  mv /tmp/blog-knravish-me/blog.knravish.me.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/blog.knravish.me.conf
mv: cannot move '/tmp/blog-knravish-me/blog.knravish.me.conf' to '/etc/nginx/sites-available/blog.knravish.me.conf': No such file or directory


Exit code: 1

--------------- stderr ---------------
mv: cannot move '/tmp/blog-knravish-me/blog.knravish.me.conf' to '/etc/nginx/sites-available/blog.knravish.me.conf': No such file or directory

Then, the SSL part"

ghost_server@instance-20240223-1343:/var/www/blog.knravish.me$ cat ~/.ghost/logs/ghost-cli-debug-2024-02-28T20_11_24_271Z.log
Debug Information:
    OS: Ubuntu, v22.04.4 LTS
    Node Version: v18.19.1
    Ghost Version: 5.79.6
    Ghost-CLI Version: 1.25.3
    Environment: production
    Command: 'ghost setup'
Message: Command failed: /bin/sh -c sudo -S -p '#node-sudo-passwd#'  openssl dhparam -dsaparam -out /etc/nginx/snippets/dhparam.pem 2048
Can't open "/etc/nginx/snippets/dhparam.pem" for writing, No such file or directory
20F0B78BFFFF0000:error:80000002:system library:BIO_new_file:No such file or directory:../crypto/bio/bss_file.c:67:calling fopen(/etc/nginx/snippets/dhparam.pem, w)
20F0B78BFFFF0000:error:10000080:BIO routines:BIO_new_file:no such file:../crypto/bio/bss_file.c:75:


Exit code: 1

--------------- stderr ---------------
Can't open "/etc/nginx/snippets/dhparam.pem" for writing, No such file or directory
20F0B78BFFFF0000:error:80000002:system library:BIO_new_file:No such file or directory:../crypto/bio/bss_file.c:67:calling fopen(/etc/nginx/snippets/dhparam.pem, w)
20F0B78BFFFF0000:error:10000080:BIO routines:BIO_new_file:no such file:../crypto/bio/bss_file.c:75:

Technical details

This is automatically output by Ghost-CLI if an error occurs, please copy & paste:

• OS: Ubuntu, v22.04.4 LTS
• Node Version: v18.19.1
• Ghost Version: 5.79.6
• Ghost-CLI Version: 1.25.3
• Environment: production
• Command: 'ghost setup'

Bug submission checklist

Please fill out this checklist to acknowledge that you followed the requirements to submit a bug report.

• Tried to find help in the forum & docs
• Checked for existing issues
• Attached log file
• Provided technical details incl. operating system

[20kaushik02]

I'll try to submit a simple PR for this if I can :)

[20kaushik02]

Any maintainers in the house...?