Is an instalation on a VPS alongside an already existing working domain possible?

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Hi there,
newbee here.

I read the administration guide and am actually already supposing that what I’d like to try is not going to work as I have a ubuntu VPS 2022.04lts, that’s the respective debian bookworm version, which I can’t change or modify for particular reasons. The Server specs are PHP Version 8.1.2-1ubuntu2.14
4 Core CPU, 8 GB Ram with 300GB NVME Disk, and I use nearly none of it.

I just read in “why can’t we use ynh on ubuntu server” the why not and saw that I could try it anyway by commenting out the version check:

“That’s fine with me” in the first place and as my basic interest is to install a few standard activitypub services like peertube, mastodon, pixelfed and castopod I would simply try it, if that worked, fine, if not “bad luck”.
I do have a shared hosting anyway so email and the rest isn’t not necessarily my goal.
If the ubuntu VPS werent a problem, my actuall question would have been if in general it is possible to install ynh alongside an existing domain instalation.

I have a friendica installation that works fine already and wouldn’t want to touch unless absolutely necessary. Actually the instalation itself is described in detail as how to in this fediverse post](tupambaeOrg [stable] | EDIT | don't follow! @ tupambaeOrg [stable]).

In other words, the server already has a LAMP instalation, and unattended-upgrades update-notifier-common apache2 fail2ban mariadb-server php libapache2-mod-php php-common php-gmp php-curl php-intl php-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-mysql php-gd php-imagick php-xml php-cli php-zip php-sqlite3 curl git installed, a domain name URL already directed to the IP of the VPS and a let’s encrypt certificate.

So, if the ubuntu thing wouldn’t been an issue in the first place, I’d ask if I could install ynh alongside the existing instalation or is there no other way than to start from scratch and than migrate the friendica instalation into ynh?

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Hi bitPickup,

Welcome to the forums!

To be blunt, you don’t mind ruining your Ubuntu installation, but you also can not replace it?

It may work, as for some apps there are actually non-Debian-native packages used; they are just as non-native for Ubuntu. On the other hand: they are chosen to work with this particular version of Debian, and tested on Yunohost.

I expect the amalgamation to break at the latest when doing a dist-upgrade of either Ubuntu or Debian, quite probably at an earlier application upgrade.

What do you mean by “a domain installation”? The next parapraph lists a LAMP stack; if that is what you mean, then: when installing Yunohost, it will install nginx as reverse proxy listening on ports 80 and 443.

You will need to update the Apache config to listen on other ports beforehand, to prevent the installer from exiting on ‘port already in use’.

Having a domain name pointed to your server is not a problem; you can install any number of domains on your Yunohost, including (subdomains of) the one you are currently using

You’re quite sure to break it by going forward on your intended path.

wel intended rant

Well, you could make things work, but people usually install Yunohost to have the system help them and to reduce complexity. With “you could make things work”, I mean that

  • you first have to try whether the installation of Yunohost will finish normally,
  • then see whether any app installs as expected,
  • cross your fingers for each and every upgrade and
  • have no regular forum help (solutions for Ubuntu don’t match, nor do those for Debian; people on Ubuntu forums will tell you you broke the system by installing alien packages and vice versa)

So, yes, you could make it work, but it is a next-level project. It would probably be easier to run a distro like Arch, where you are supposed to do everything by hand, instead of let the system help you (in the wrong way, in this case)

Seeing you got quite a heavy server, but barely use it, is it your server to command or are there services of other parties running on it that can not be touched?

Just for testing things, you could start with a cheap VPS and try if the system suits you. If it does, and you can spare €1 per month, you can keep it as testing server for your ‘real’ server and point a test.myapp.mydomain.tld domain to it.

Having an extra server would also allow you to mirror the settings of your Friendica installation, and have these handy when/in case you re-install elsewhere.

Yunohost allows many apps to be backed up on one server, and be restored on another server. Some apps though, and I suspect Friendica to be one of those, will not allow you to change the domain after installation.

If such were a possible path for you, we can discuss it further before I now run my keyboard out of letters :wink:

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You will break your server.
Instead, create an lxc container for it.

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Hahaha, yes, that’s a concise summary of my post :stuck_out_tongue:

Do keep in mind, that you still have to deal with a reverse proxy to make Apache on Ubuntu and services on Yunohost available side by side (which may or not be something to look forward to, depending on your familiarity with the matter)

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It’s possible to use an additional ip address or maybe use ipv6 only. It’s also possible to install nginx proxy manager in an lxc container, forward all the traffic to it, make a bridge for local networking and npm manages the proxying.
There are a lot of scenarios, but not yunohost running in Ubuntu and even if it was debian, it already has lamp and other packages installed.
I don’t recommend installing yunohost other than the ways the documentation says, especially for someone who is willing to discover it, since it will be a very unpleasant experience. May be after gaining some experience, it would be conceivable to live dangerously

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Well, as I’m new to this layout here, no idea if both of you will get notice of my reply but I guess so, there for thx first of all for the fast response. I was actually already afraid to just be ignored because of violating all written and unwritten rules out here.

The server is a “donation” for one year by someone who, if I remember well, said something along the lines of, “if you mess things up the only help I can give you is reset it”.
Than he disappeared suddenly …
Now I just found a way to contact him, 13 month in, and he told me that he is not well, that I just can go on using it and that in any case he gives me advise 6 month in advance if the server goes offline.

So bothering someone who as health issues is kinda no go, maybe I’ll ask him if it is possible to throw debian on it, gotta meditate on all this in the first place.

  • Excellent the 1 buck per month info, that is for a lot of reasons a good option to work things out.

The site I set up and the way I set it up, kinda single user instance with community forum pages, uses after one year not even 1gig (latest backup DB and Images 561MB) of space so there is literally a lot of unused capacity.
Also, my goal isn’t to setup something and be responsible for other peoples data and security, but to create use cases for the platforms mentioned already, to see how Yunohost works and if it is what I guess it is, the perfect tool to say to every club, school, entity and village:
“You see, you are not imprisoned in their walled gardens, you just don’t want to be free”.

Jokes aside, that’s more or less the background.
The idea is to set up a system for a group of people, some community of supporters, where there is space for max 500 mastodon/pixelfed users, 100 peertuber, around 50 friendica and castopod users, maybe a diaspora pod for the lulz, element and that’s it. I guess the capacity of the server would be more than sufficient to test that out, as well as the minimum time left. I would never reach those user numbers I guess, even more as the idea is to have them “hand picked”.
Ultimately the “white paper” I’m working on in spanisch (latin america) is for miniPC use, like refurbished HP miniDesk 800 g2, so that people can plug them into their fiber connection and have fun.
No Yunohost users, except admin staff, only website front end access by the respective platforms and somehow thru “invitation only”.

Even tho friendica has in theory the option to change the domain name, there has never been someone who really tested it, and considering decentralized federation of contacts, that’s way more complicated than to change the URL of a phpBB forum. And with those terms I actually exposed all my knowledge and experience so I guess we all agree that unless I find a way to:

  • update the existing friendica instance to the same version yunohost uses right now
  • find out if my existing data base setup can be merged to the yunohost settings, beginning by getting an understanding of nginx and all that
  • and my VPS patron can provide me with a simple debian 12 installation

… I will just leave things as they are for now.

I will have do some sleep over meditation to figure out what’s best and the most reasonable way to go forward.

Probably it will be to move the existing installation to some 1 buck a month server and in any case play with Yunohost on Ubuntu so the community can learn what not to do, why not to do it and have a good laugh meanwhile.
(what actually might not be the worst choice, considering that everything will end in total entropy anyway)

Summing up for now:

  • it could/would be possible to run an existing debian domain installation alongside a Yunohost installation

Things that would be needed to be checked out are:

  • update the Apache config to listen on other ports beforehand, to prevent the installer from exiting on ‘port already in use’

In case of Ubuntu server

  • critical will be any dist-upgrade of either Ubuntu or Debian (so that wont happen)

  • critical would be quite probably some application upgrade (for the server or the application?)

  • All this is definitely not the point and kinda extra work that will make you sleep with the Damocles sword of the doubt under your pillow

Also:

  • figure out what a lxc container is (even tho this sounds like a non plus ultra geekNerd recommendation of the “I love this one and only special latest trick” kind)

Other aspects about Yunohost and my particularities

  • older and very old friendica versions I still have, but stopped working because shared hosting doesn’t work, mainly because of proc_open and cron restrictions, could probably be installed as “custom webapps” and eventually be upgraded step by step with git or left as museum websites
  • same goes for the actual installation which is 2023.05 (while today’s stable is 2024.12) The outdated version could probably run without updating in a “webapp container”.

Most reasonable proposal forward:

  • move the existing friendica server {commons™}.org to a minimal VPS server to check out how it works on very low resources. By the way polish and recheck last years howTo move-install a friendica server and publish it.
  • ask the patron if a debian12 from scratch is possible
  • install Yunohost on patronVPS server from scratch with {commons™}.com domain, being it debian or Ubuntu
  • install proposed setup creating tutorials (in spanisch ¿or englisch?) on the fly
  • don’t worry, be happy

… and don’t panic.

Take aways:

  • you can hand out emails with emailname+subfolder@{commons™}.com
  • the welcomeBot in this forum is a pain in the a**