Ghost & Docker

Published: at 03:03 PM

Since I have had this blog up and running, I’ve been using ghost with a Digital Ocean virtual machine. If you’re looking to go that route, I have written a quick tutorial on that here. I have not had any issues, but since I have been using Docker more and more, I decided it was finally time to throw my blog into a container. I have to admit, it took a few days and a bit of research. Maybe I’m still new at this whole coding thing, I know I have a ton to learn, but seriously?

I ran into a few hiccups, but I did finally find a solution. I am using the Official Docker Ghost Image. It briefly describes how to get it up and running. Well, almost… The commands given will end up giving you an error:

ERROR: Unable to access Ghost's content path:
	EACCES: permission denied, open '/usr/src/ghost/content/apps/ebc538ae3ae45772'

Check that the content path exists and file system permissions are correct.
Help and documentation can be found at http://support.ghost.org.

npm info [email protected] Failed to exec start script
npm ERR! Linux 3.10.94-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64
npm ERR! argv "/usr/local/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "start"
npm ERR! node v4.2.3
npm ERR! npm  v2.14.7
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! [email protected] start: `node index`
npm ERR! Exit status 235
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] start script 'node index'.
npm ERR! This is most likely a problem with the ghost package,
npm ERR! not with npm itself.
npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR!     node index
npm ERR! You can get their info via:
npm ERR!     npm owner ls ghost
npm ERR! There is likely additional logging output above.
npm ERR! Linux 3.10.94-1.el6.elrepo.x86_64
npm ERR! argv "/usr/local/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "start"
npm ERR! node v4.2.3
npm ERR! npm  v2.14.7
npm ERR! path npm-debug.log.7da2e9feb6af80ea1c45d89105a542fd
npm ERR! code EACCES
npm ERR! errno -13
npm ERR! syscall open

npm ERR! Error: EACCES: permission denied, open 'npm-debug.log.7da2e9feb6af80ea1c45d89105a542fd'
npm ERR!     at Error (native)
npm ERR!  { [Error: EACCES: permission denied, open 'npm-debug.log.7da2e9feb6af80ea1c45d89105a542fd']
npm ERR!   errno: -13,
npm ERR!   code: 'EACCES',
npm ERR!   syscall: 'open',
npm ERR!   path: 'npm-debug.log.7da2e9feb6af80ea1c45d89105a542fd' }
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

npm ERR! Please include the following file with any support request:
npm ERR!     /usr/src/ghost/npm-debug.log

Reading the comments didn’t help me much, but did get me pointed in the right direction. It appears that ghost has permission issues when running in production. However, @snnd posted this little gem.

So I did what he said and it didn’t work. I had to make some more changes to the start.sh file. In all fairness, it is most likely my fault, but I was able to get it to work.

Let’s Make a Ghost Container!

Be sure to copy your content folder if you already have a ghost blog up and running. If you don’t, you can add these folders or use the ones from the repo mentioned earlier and place them where ever you want your ghost files to live on your host. You will also need a config file. I did a git clone https://github.com/snnd/docker-ghost-bundle.git and changed the directory name to mycodingblog/.

I also added all of my data, images and theme files to the appropriate directories. Next, I edited the mycodingblog/config/config.js file:

var path = require("path"),
  config;

config = {
  production: {
    url: "http://mycodingblog.com/",
    mail: {},
    database: {
      client: "sqlite3",
      connection: {
        filename: path.join("/usr/src/ghost/content/data/ghost.db"),
      },
      debug: true,
    },

    server: {
      host: "0.0.0.0",
      port: "2368",
    },
  },
};

module.exports = config;

Then I edited the start.sh file:

#!/bin/bash

docker run -d --name mycodingblog \
	-p 8080:2368 \
	-e VIRTUAL_HOST=mycodingblog.com \
	-e NODE_ENV=production \
	-v /mycodingblog/content/themes:/usr/src/ghost/content/themes \
	-v /mycodingblog/content/apps:/usr/src/ghost/content/apps \
	-v /mycodingblog/content/images:/usr/src/ghost/content/images \
	-v /mycodingblog/content/data:/usr/src/ghost/content/data \
	-v /mycodingblog/config:/var/lib/ghost \
	ghost

Then I typed ./start.sh. Of course this was after playing around with it for a few hours. Make sure to use the -d flag to run in detached mode. It started up and told me to point my browser to http://mycodingblog.com. So now you should have a ghost container up and running.