As already discussed, I am currently using Plausible in their community edition for collecting anonymous metrics about people getting on my website. They lately published a major release of the application, and I did the upgrade today. This did not go completely smoothly, so I am going to write down what went wrong.

My compose file

My compose file is essentially the one they propose in their community edition repo:

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services:
  plausible_db:
    image: harbor.tech-tales.blog/docker-proxy/library/postgres:16-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./db-data-16:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U postgres"]
      start_period: 1m

  plausible_events_db:
    image: harbor.tech-tales.blog/docker-proxy/clickhouse/clickhouse-server:24.12-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./event-data:/var/lib/clickhouse
      - ./event-logs:/var/log/clickhouse-server
      - ./clickhouse/clickhouse-config.xml:/etc/clickhouse-server/config.d/logging.xml:ro
      - ./clickhouse/clickhouse-user-config.xml:/etc/clickhouse-server/users.d/logging.xml:ro
    ulimits:
      nofile:
        soft: 262144
        hard: 262144
    environment:
      CLICKHOUSE_SKIP_USER_SETUP: "1"
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "wget --no-verbose --tries=1 -O - http://127.0.0.1:8123/ping || exit 1"]
      start_period: 1m

  plausible:
    image: harbor.tech-tales.blog/github-proxy/plausible/community-edition:v3.0.1
    restart: unless-stopped
    command: sh -c "/entrypoint.sh db createdb && /entrypoint.sh db migrate && /entrypoint.sh run"
    depends_on:
      plausible_db:
        condition: service_healthy
      plausible_events_db:
        condition: service_healthy
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    env_file:
      - .env
    volumes:
      - ./plausible-data:/var/lib/plausible
    ulimits:
      nofile:
        soft: 65535
        hard: 65535

The only real difference is the usage of Docker volumes for them, where I just use path mounts.

Permission problems, obviously

When updating, I took the time, checked their proposed compose file and adapted my file accordingly. There were two important things I did not have before:

  • A mount for the /var/log/clickhouse-server directory
  • A mount for /var/lib/plausible

I added both and already anticipated that there might be permission issues. And indeed, there were.

The permission looks really bad

plausible-1            | 15:57:51.776 [notice] Application tzdata exited: exited in: Tzdata.App.start(:normal, [])
plausible-1            |     ** (EXIT) an exception was raised:
plausible-1            |         ** (MatchError) no match of right hand side value: {:error, {:shutdown, {:failed_to_start_child, Tzdata.EtsHolder, {%File.Error{reason: :enoent, path: "/var/lib/plausible/tzdata_data/release_ets", action: "list directory"}, [{File, :ls!, 1, [file: ~c"lib/file.ex", line: 1700]}, {Tzdata.EtsHolder, :release_files_for_dir, 1, [file: ~c"lib/tzdata/ets_holder.ex", line: 127]}, {Tzdata.EtsHolder, :make_sure_a_release_is_on_file, 0, [file: ~c"lib/tzdata/ets_holder.ex", line: 90]}, {Tzdata.EtsHolder, :init, 1, [file: ~c"lib/tzdata/ets_holder.ex", line: 16]}, {:gen_server, :init_it, 2, [file: ~c"gen_server.erl", line: 2229]}, {:gen_server, :init_it, 6, [file: ~c"gen_server.erl", line: 2184]}, {:proc_lib, :init_p_do_apply, 3, [file: ~c"proc_lib.erl", line: 329]}]}}}}
plausible-1            |             (tzdata 1.1.3) lib/tzdata/tzdata_app.ex:13: Tzdata.App.start/2
plausible-1            |             (kernel 10.2.4) application_master.erl:295: :application_master.start_it_old/4
plausible-1            | Kernel pid terminated (application_controller) ("{application_start_failure,tzdata,{bad_return,{{'Elixir.Tzdata.App',start,[normal,[]]},{'EXIT',{{badmatch,{error,{shutdown,{failed_to_start_child,'Elixir.Tzdata.EtsHolder',{#{reason => enoent,path => <<\"/var/lib/plausible/tzdata_data/release_ets\">>,action => <<\"list directory\">>,'__struct__' => 'Elixir.File.Error','__exception__' => true},[{'Elixir.File','ls!',1,[{file,\"lib/file.ex\"},{line,1700}]},{'Elixir.Tzdata.EtsHolder',release_files_for_dir,1,[{file,\"lib/tzdata/ets_holder.ex\"},{line,127}]},{'Elixir.Tzdata.EtsHolder',make_sure_a_release_is_on_file,0,[{file,\"lib/tzdata/ets_holder.ex\"},{line,90}]},{'Elixir.Tzdata.EtsHolder',init,1,[{file,\"lib/tzdata/ets_holder.ex\"},{line,16}]},{gen_server,init_it,2,[{file,\"gen_server.erl\"},{line,2229}]},{gen_server,init_it,6,[{file,\"gen_server.erl\"},{line,2184}]},{proc_lib,init_p_do_apply,3,[{file,\"proc_lib.erl\"},{line,329}]}]}}}}},[{'Elixir.Tzdata.App',start,2,[{file,\"lib/tzdata/tzdata_app.ex\"},{line,13}

It’s not even mentioned that there might be a permission error somewhere…

But so be it. I checked which user ID plausible uses: docker compose exec plausible id, which returned the ID 999 and the GID 65533. I then ran (sudo) chmod -R 999 plausible-data, and everything was fine again.

Side note

As it turns out, for me, not much changed with the new version. Everything still looks the same as before. But it’s probably a good thing that the major version was updated?