this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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You Should Know

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So if you do the Docker setup, obeying the instructions and substituting everything that needs to get substituted, but don't proofread the files in detail and so miss that line 40 of docker-compose.yml doesn't have the variable {{domain}} like in every other location you need to write your domain, but instead just says LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST=lemmy.ml and so you fail to change it away from lemmy.ml... then, everything will work, until you type in your admin password for the first time, at which point your browser will send a request to lemmy.ml which includes your admin username, your email address, and the admin password you're trying to set. And, also, of course your IP address wherever you are sitting and setting up the server.

I have no reason at all to think the Lemmy devs have set their server up to log this information when it comes in. nginx will throw it away by default, of course, but it would be easy for them to have it save it instead, if they wanted to. And my guess is most people won't use a different admin password once they figure out why creating their admin user isn't working and fix it.

@dessalines@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml I think you should fix the docker-compose.yml file not to do this.

Edit: Just to increase the information-to-rudeness ratio of my post. The docs are at:

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/install_docker.html

And they recommend using wget to download:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/main/assets/docker-compose.yml

Which is pulled from:

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/tree/main/assets

Which is what has the wrong line 40 in it.

Edit: They fixed it. Good stuff.

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[–] Pratai@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago

Because people make mistakes and nobody is perfect and even paid software has problems?

[–] AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml 13 points 13 hours ago

Oh no, the secret plot of the tankies for world domination has been unmasked!

[–] towerful@programming.dev 7 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I really wish there was a way to enforce transparency of docker env vars.
I get that it's impossible to make it a part of docker, env vars get parsed by code and turned into variables. There is no way that docker can enforce it, cause a null/undefined check with a default value is all that would be needed to subvert checks by docker, and every language uses a different way to check env vars (eg .env files, environment init scripts, whatever).
And even then, the env var value could be passed through a ridiculous chain of assignments and checks.
And, some of those 'get env var' routines could be conditional. Not all projects capture all env vars during some initial routine.

I've spent hours (maybe days) trawling through undocumented env vars trying to figure out their purpose, in order to leverage them in docker/k8s stacks.
I wish there was something.

Thankfully, a bit of time spent with a FOSS project and reviewing the code does shed light on hidden env vars.
And a PR or 2 gets comments and documentation updated.
Open source is awesome

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, I honestly just strongly dislike the whole Docker ethos. It was designed for one thing (deployment at scale), at which it excelled, and then everyone uses it for a different thing (reproducible one-off deployment), at which it is fine, basically, but just kind of the minimum set of capabilities to get the job done.

Nix can do what Docker does, in a much superior fashion (lower disk space, much better transparency, rollback ability, lack of towering chains of follow-on effects as you are talking about, and applications outside of mucking around with containerized images), but for some reason everyone uses Docker, and Nix is as far as I can tell unused outside of NixOS.

Whatever. When they make me king, it'll be different, that's all I can say.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Nix and Docker / container runtimes are completely different animals. Each is good at what they do, but those are vastly different things, with some overlap. If you want to share a kernel but use fewer resources than a VM, containers can do that. If you want to go further and completely isolate, you can use microvm’s like firecracker.

I don’t follow what is wrong with that. Maybe you mean it’s use where people use it specifically as a package manager. I agree with that, but even then it has its handy place.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 points 14 hours ago

Maybe you mean it’s use where people use it specifically as a package manager

Precisely. Containerization is great and Docker does it well. Sending someone a reproducible script that can set up your software package for them is great. Marrying the two concepts unnecessarily and using one specific tool which is designed primarily to do the first, to instead do the second, is the only real issue I’m taking with it.

[–] starman@programming.dev 125 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You should edit your post with link to this PR - it's fixed now

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/pull/379

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 55 points 1 day ago

This is fixed now.

[–] AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world 123 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thank you for discovering this, and creating awareness around it.

Seems like a genuine miss, contrary to what the comments here would have one believe, given that the compose file (and rest of the docs) were mostly derived from whatever worked for the developers themselves.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 35 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Seems like a genuine miss, contrary to what the comments here would have one believe,

You might be right. I looked at the history and the way it came in, and it's not as wildly anomalous to the rest of the file when looked at in context. Maybe it's just a mistake.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

if it was inadvertent you'd think someone at the receiving address would have spoken up....

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[–] burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

ope, just gonna squeeze on through this minefield, dont mind me

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 112 points 1 day ago (28 children)

That’s so on-character for .ml

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 76 points 1 day ago (10 children)

The longer I look at it the more suspicious I am of it, to be honest. I'm just kind of generally a paranoid and accusatory person, so take that into account, but... the files are pretty carefully set up. They have variable substitutions for everything, including a bunch of places where there's a template substitution to change a string around when setting cache keys so that it'll still work out-of-the-box right away, even in complex configurations like multiple domains on a single server. It all works out-of-the-box right away, they've clearly been attentive to making sure it's all set up right and keeps working cleanly as things have been evolving forward. Except for that one place.

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[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 42 points 1 day ago (18 children)

Im loving that there are ml users coming in and defending it lol

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[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Was just gonna say. Exactly what some authoritarian boot lickers would do.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 53 points 1 day ago

“Of course the Central Committee would have access to your instance. Why is that a problem? Are you doing something counter-revolutionary?!”

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[–] Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 59 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Why make a Lemmy post about this and not just a GitHub issue?

[–] lorty@lemmy.ml 4 points 18 hours ago

Why try to fix the issue if you can just farm some drama?

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 114 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I think it should be more public knowledge than just people who peruse the github issues. Also, it's so trivial to fix that it will save them some time if they don't have to close the issue after they spend literally 10-15 seconds fixing it.

[–] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 92 points 1 day ago (38 children)

I think you should also make a GitHub issue too

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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 day ago

Good catch, seems like an oversight.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Bruh

Now I have trust issues with open source programs.

points glock at VLC Media Player

"WHO THE FUCK DO YOU WORK FOR? TRYING TO JUMPSCARE ME?"

💥🔫
💥🔫
💥🔫
💥🔫
💥🔫
💥🔫

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm reminded of stories I've heard of graduate students hiding a note and some cash in the pages of their theses that they submit to the university, just to see if anyone bothers reading it and takes the cash. They return years later to find it still there.

With open source, the code is all there ready for review by anyone, as long as you have the technical knowhow and patience to review the code you use. But like reading the terms and conditions for everything we use, how many people actually take the time to go through all that code?

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 9 points 23 hours ago

Some people do and at least you can, which makes it much better than proprietary software, where it is impossible to find out, if they didn't include a direct pipeline to whatever three letter agency asked them to do it.

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