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.

  • irishPotato@sh.itjust.works
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    9 hours 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.