Discourse 💬

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:bookmark: ITT the features of Discourse are enumerated and their efficacy for suiting the bespoke needs of eom.dev is discussed.

TLDR: Discourse on eom.dev is a place where I publish my own content and host community discussions relevant to my various subjects of interest.

Advantages of Discourse

For a complete list of Discourse features, visit the project homepage. I would like to draw attention to the following noteworthy features:

Data Fidelity

:writing_hand: Plain-text, the universal interface, is used to compose posts in markdown format.
:memo: Wiki posts allow for collaborative documentation.

SMTP Compatibility

:email: Email clients can easily subscribe to threads and create new topics.

Federated Internet

:bust_in_silhouette: Single sign-on from trusted third-parties allow users to maintain a single account across many platforms.
:globe_with_meridians: ActivityPub connects Discourse to the Fediverse, allowing users to follow categories and tags on any compatible platform.

Site-Specific Nuances

Discourse is one of many services hosted on eom.dev. Some of the others include:

:desktop_computer: Gitea stores source code and executes automatons.
:cloud: Nextcloud does groupware.
:file_folder: MinIO handles object storage.
:speech_balloon: Matrix is for quick, real-time chat (the fast lane).
:newspaper: Discourse is for formal discussions (the slow lane).
:video_camera: Owncast hosts live streams.

These services, along with some backend ones, work together to create the eom.dev platform. More details can be found in the software-infrastructure repository on Gitea.

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I have updated the configuration settings for logins to allow users to create local accounts with email addresses. I had wanted to use ubiquitous SSO with upstream providers for accounts on my network, but I am wondering if that is actually a barrier to entry for some users, so I have decided to enable local accounts on this platform.

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Hi!
I’m Kenji (or eev in luanti).
I tried to get a local account with my own email address, but I didn’t receive the activation email.
So for now, I regstered with my google account.

What am I missing?

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Hi eev,

Thanks for joining! Did you check your spam box for the activation email? It is a self-hosted email server, so providers sometimes block it. You should be able to link the account to your email and give it a local password on the user settings page.

I think you’re the first to use a local account, so I’m happy to help debug!

Edit: I can see a second eev account in the backend, so it seems the initial account creation did work. I haven’t sent to that email domain before, so I would definitely check the spam box!

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I’ve found this in my mail server logs:

2025-11-02T12:36:05.108026+00:00 mail-74549b9f8d-thrcr postfix/smtp[203437]: 15BBFA51C1: to=<hoge@mtkn.jp>, relay=mail.mtkn.jp[*.*.*.*]:25, delay=1, delays=0.05/0.02/0.96/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (host mail.mtkn.jp[*.*.*.*] refused to talk to me: 550 no FCrDNS.)

I’m not too familiar with FCrDNS, so I can’t say if the issue is on my end or yours. :thinking:

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Hi eric.

This log means my smtp server couldn’t confirm that your server IP address is really owned by the same owner of the domain ‘eom.dev’.

Could you set the reverse DNS for your server IP address pointing to the domain ‘eom.dev’?

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Yes, I’ve created this issue to track it:

I was under the impression I had already set this up, so I will have to double check my configuration.

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$ dig eom.dev

returns your A record pointing to 136.56.38.209.
but

$ dig -x 136.56.38.209

returns PTR record pointing to 136-56-38-209.googlefiber.net., not eom.dev..

Do you host this site at home?
Then I think you can’t set the reverse DNS because the IP address is owned by the ISP (in this case Google?).
Possibly you can ask google to set the reverse DNS, but google probably don’t set that.

I will also check if I can opt out your domain from the FCrDNS filter.

By the way, can you send and receive emails from different domains like gmail.com?

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Yeah these were interesting to set up. I actually made a video about it a while ago in another thread… If you don’t mind, though, I would prefer to keep this thread for discussing Discourse and move debugging the mail server to the Gitea issue linked above. Thanks! :grin:

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