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.

  • AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world
    1101·
    14 days ago

    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.catOP
      312·
      14 days ago

      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.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
          21·
          13 days ago

          Well, part of the price I pay for being a consistent dickhead is that sometimes people aren’t enthused to respond to me. I get why they wouldn’t really want to respond here and get yelled at, whether or not it was malicious, and instead just fix it and go on.

          In my opinion it would be a healthier way to go about things if they were willing to meet criticism head-on, but the pro-authoritarianism position they’ve staked out for themselves is so widely and bitterly unpopular that I think that ship has sailed and they’re unlikely to engage with most of the free-speaking world at this point, because it would just be a torrent of abuse and mockery and so what would even be gained by it.

          • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
            11·
            12 days ago

            they’re unlikely to engage with most of the free-speaking world at this point, because it would just be a torrent of abuse and mockery and so what would even be gained by it.

            side effects of never letting a good opportunity to red bait go to waste I guess

      • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
        610·
        14 days ago

        When it comes to tankies/rightwing/etc/etc I always assume a Reverse Hanlons Razor. Never attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
      767·
      14 days ago

      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.

      • lorty@lemmy.ml
        1451·
        14 days ago

        If we are entertain this idea, what could they possibly gain from this? Stealing passwords isn’t effective if the victim knows it’s been stolen.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
          428·
          14 days ago

          I think it would be very rare that people would put two and two together to realize that their password had been “stolen” by this event. Like I say, I have no real idea even if it is being stolen, just that it would be trivial for .ml to decide that they wanted to start keeping a little cache of everyone’s admin email addresses and passwords.

          Like someone else said, if it was anyplace other than lemmy.ml, I wouldn’t give it a second thought, it would just be “whoa you gotta fix this.” I sort of agree with you that there’s not even really any strong indication that there’s anything all that bad they could do with it. It’s only because lemmy.ml moderation actions already have such a pattern of authoritarian dishonesty that I get to any degree paranoid or alarmed about it.

        • otacon239@lemmy.world
          241·
          14 days ago

          That’s just it. Someone might not realize that all that info was passed to the server when it failed if they weren’t thinking about it. They’d just correct their mistake and move on with their day, especially if they’re new to server administration as I’m sure many (not necessarily most) Lemmy admins would be.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
          197·
          14 days ago

          “What could they possibly gain from having keys to the kingdom?”

          rofl! Continue proving how absolutely brainless bootlickers are… It’s a good fit for you.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
        208·
        14 days ago

        Yeah, don’t they realize they could have just spent that time productively by making a pull request, instead?

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
            209·
            14 days ago

            I mean probably I should. There are a bunch of people accusing me of being dick headed and petty and they’re not completely wrong. Honestly, I just don’t feel like helping the Lemmy devs. Dessalines, at least, is totally unapologetic about being a dickhead to people he has power over. That puts me in a mindset where, mostly, I want to talk to other people about potential harm he’s in a position to do, and not really in a mindset where I want to do even a small amount of extra work on his behalf.

            I’m going to tell other people that he’s in a position to take their passwords. If he wants to see that and put himself not in that position anymore? Great, I think he should. If he gets his feelings hurt because I’m not being super friendly about it? Well… okay. I’m not trying to be malicious about it or do anything other than clearly communicate the problem. But it seems like the lemmy.ml “in charge” crew in general has a lot of a mentality that’s kind of like, “Well, I’m in charge, and you’re not, so fuck what you think and fuck your rights. Ban.” (or whatever). The way I operate is that really makes me not want to be extra friendly or courteous to people. I used to have a regular donation to Lemmy development set up, I used to take it seriously the idea of getting involved in contributing to the code, and then I observed how they operate, and … like I say I’m mostly talking to the other people involved who I think should be aware of this. If the devs want to react, fix it, or get involved in the conversation, then sure, sounds good.

            The fix is in the comments below, if someone else wants to contribute it and do the very small amount of work of getting it in.

            • percent@infosec.pub
              269·
              14 days ago

              It sounds like a pull request would have been much more helpful, with much less effort. But you want it fixed less than you want it publicized, so you chose this option (even though you could have done both).

              In other words, you cared less about the people impacted by this problem, and more about your own opportunity to put the author(s) on blast like this.

              And you care about that opportunity so much, that it’s even worth it to show this dark side of yourself publicly.

              Am I understanding that right?

              • BassTurd@lemmy.world
                184·
                14 days ago

                Or OP is spreading the word to get it out there. Now it’s got eyes on it thanks to OPs work.

                Jesus. Some of you people just want to shit on someone for doing a good thing for no reason. Have you put in a pull request yet or are you just showing your dark side on top of being a dick to OP who did something good?

                • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
                  82·
                  14 days ago

                  One of the .ml users down below volunteered to put in the PR later tonight if no one else has, so it sounds like both bases are covered now.

                • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
                  32·
                  14 days ago

                  There’s been a multiyear crusade to oust .ml from the Fediverse with demands that the developers relinquish their instance servers to a third party and/or stop developing Lemmy altogether. That’s not an irrelevant context here given it is usually the same routine players.

                • percent@infosec.pub
                  54·
                  14 days ago

                  They could have done both.

                  If it’s not fixed by Monday, I will consider starting the approval process from the legal department that requires it from me.

                  I wish I had the freedom to just open a PR anywhere anytime, but I don’t.

              • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
                102·
                14 days ago

                Let’s not get carried away. Shared software systems are about more than the software. If you’re looking only at the software, and that was literally 100% of what is important here and nothing else, then yes, you’re right.

                But you want it fixed less than you want it publicized

                100%. Yes. Correct. I also want it fixed, but that’s completely trivial, with or without the pull request.

                • irishPotato@sh.itjust.works
                  6·
                  14 days ago

                  I think there you hit the nail on the head! Just the fact that it is in there, whether intentionally or not is something that warrants warning people about. So that in the case someone goes to set up a server, they at least know that recently there was this rather severe risk of unnecessary credential exposure, again no matter if it was intentional or not.

                  However, I will say that I think I would have also opened the PR, not to help the original dev necessarily, but helping those that might come to use the software later.

            • TachyonTele@piefed.socialEnglish
              1513·
              14 days ago

              Regardless of all that drama, you could have spent five minutes at anytime in the last two hours writing significantly less than you have, and putting the the request in.

              You could have been done doing it in-between replies. Just saying.

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        612·
        14 days ago

        The devs have access to the source code. Why would they put something like this two layers deep into the documentation? It’s like those people that think Mozilla is evil, because Mozilla openly talks about what they’re doing. If they wanted to be evil, you would know jackshit about it.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
          53·
          14 days ago
          • “This isn’t even malicious, just look at it, it’s perfectly innocent”
          • “Besides, if they wanted to do something, they could disguise it way better than this”

          Pick a lane, .ml.

          • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
            23·
            14 days ago

            I’ll let the hivemind know that we’re supposed to have only one opinion.

      • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5510·
        14 days ago

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

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
      234·
      14 days ago

      We are using their tools though…

      Well, you are, while I am on PieFed:-P If you do not like what you’ve heard here, then consider switching to Piefed.World (Lemmy.World’s recently-announced PieFed replacement for Lemmy)

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        61·
        14 days ago

        Oh, that’s interesting. Didn’t know about that.

        I don’t think that there’s a way to list instances that a PieFed instance has defederated from, unlike Lemmy; while both have a list of instances at /instances, only Lemmy indicates which ones have been defederated from. It was a helpful tool to help me guess the sort of content an instance had.

        Like:

        https://lemmy.world/instances (under “Blocked Instances”)

        https://piefed.world/instances

        EDIT: It does show the last time that the instance sent data, and I guess you could sort of guess that if a large instance that probably has activity hasn’t sent data to the PieFed instance recently — like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net on piefed.world — then they’re probably defederated. But it doesn’t clearly indicate that this is the case, either.

    • lorty@lemmy.ml
      4329·
      14 days ago

      Why are you assuming malice when this is probably just a mistake/oversight?

      • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
        511·
        14 days ago

        They are even more fanatically anti - ml than their beloved ww2 nazi examples.
        You can feel them foaming at the mouth.

  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
    304·
    14 days ago

    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
      24·
      14 days ago

      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?

  • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
    173·
    13 days ago

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

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
      132·
      14 days ago
      --- a/docker-compose.yml	2025-07-12 00:17:33.050443300 +0000
+++ b/docker-compose.yml	2025-07-12 00:18:21.038972526 +0000
@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
     image: dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.19.12
     environment:
       - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST=lemmy:8536
-      - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST=lemmy.ml
+      - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST={{ domain }}
       - LEMMY_UI_HTTPS=true
     volumes:
       - ./volumes/lemmy-ui/extra_themes:/app/extra_themes

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

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
    114·
    14 days ago
    rise up against dockers and the evil empire of containerization! reproducibility! microservices! middle management! security!

    /j

    • Scrollone@feddit.it
      32·
      14 days ago

      Seriously, is Docker a good thing or is it the usual hyped product that ends up being more expensive in the end? (like Amazon AWS)

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
        32·
        14 days ago

        Docker is a mediocre solution to a real problem. It doesn’t cost any money, it does the job, but also, it consumes lots more disk than it needs to and can’t do some things that a solution in this space really should be able to do.

        If the world had decided that Nix was the way to containerize their web services and make them reproducible, the world would have been a better place, but that wasn’t what happened (yet at least).

  • towerful@programming.dev
    7·
    14 days ago

    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.catOP
      73·
      14 days ago

      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
        51·
        13 days ago

        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.catOP
          5·
          13 days 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.