this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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Hello all,
I am attempting to self host piefed on a vps server running Debian 13 in docker with nginx proxy manager. I am at the step where I build it from source, and whenever I do it I get a ton of permission denied errors. I know the instructions said to chown 1000 the previous step, which I did but it still doesnt work. Thanks for the help.

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[–] MuttMutt@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

When you are running chown what is the exact command you are running and from what directory? Where are you getting your instructions? What error are you getting exactly? Did you verify that the directory has the correct owner before continuing? What are the directory permissions? What are the directory permissions supposed to be?

It's impossible to troubleshoot without the information.

[–] a_person@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I am getting my instructions from the official piefed codeberg repo for installing docker. https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/INSTALL-docker.md. I cloned the repo in my ~/pyfedi directory, and ran the script in it as well. My issue is that I am not sure what chmod 1000 command to run to remove the docker build errors of permission denied.

[–] kumi@feddit.online 3 points 4 days ago

Just to rule it out (wouldn't be the case on default debian):

Is SELinux enabled? sudo getenforce (if command missing or false, it's not your problem here)

You are not running with podman as compose backend? sudo systemctl status podman shouldn't show an active service unless you use it.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Nowhere in https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/INSTALL-docker.md does the word chmod appear.

When you say 'ran the script in it', what do you mean?

[–] a_person@piefed.social 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Sorry, chown not chmod. And yes, in this section.

BUILD PIEFED

export DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 sudo docker compose up --build

Wait until text in terminal stops scrolling. Ignore the configuration check errors at this point.
If you see many permission-related errors, try repeating the previous step **(with the chown command using 1000 instead of your username)**
Test external access from browser (On port 8030). Watch for movement in terminal window. Browser will show "Internal Server Error" message. Proceed to initialize database to address this error message.
[–] rimu@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago

Ah ok.

That docker-dirs.sh script is trying to set the right permissions onto these directories:

"pgdata", "media", "logs", "tmp".

The owner of those directories needs to be the same user as the one running docker.