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.
You should edit your post with link to this PR - it’s fixed now
Edited.
ope, just gonna squeeze on through this minefield, dont mind me
This is fixed now.
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.
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.
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.
That’s so on-character for .ml
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.
this is how those Marxist Leninst nation state actors work
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.
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.
Entertaining the idea… Lol
Do you think OP is making it up?
I assume they just mean the idea that is malicious and not just stupidity.
Neither is good
Yeah but one is typically significantly easier to deal with non-violently.
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.
“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.
if the victim knows it’s been stolen.
You daft, mate? Or, just high as giraffe balls?
Im loving that there are ml users coming in and defending it lol
Yeah, don’t they realize they could have just spent that time productively by making a pull request, instead?
Honestly, you found the fault. I agree that you should put the request in.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let’s not get carried away.
…
Right…
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.
You could do it to. Be the change you want to see, or be a dick. Your choice I guess.
No i have no idea how to do anything like that. OP does.
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.
- “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.
I’ll let the hivemind know that we’re supposed to have only one opinion.
Was just gonna say. Exactly what some authoritarian boot lickers would do.
“Of course the Central Committee would have access to your instance. Why is that a problem? Are you doing something counter-revolutionary?!”
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)
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.
Try asking in !piefed_meta@piefed.social , !piefed_help@piefed.social or https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/issues
I’ve only been on PieFed a month or so and they’ve already dealt with half a dozen things I’ve mentioned, from bugs to feature requests.
Why are you assuming malice when this is probably just a mistake/oversight?
Because of the way Dessalines and Nutomic consistently act?
Watch. They won’t apologize or admit wrongdoing here. They never do.
They did patch it just now.
I wonder what their answer for this will be in the coming days.
Everyone here will be ml banned for five months.
And nothing of value would be lost.
Just the normal entropy of things
of course they will. this is still software
Because “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time .”
All I see here is a mistake. If that’s unforgivable to you then so be it.
If it wasn’t .ml I would not assume malice
Lol you’re on .world, what are you on about
As someone pointed out, as the admin of .ml is also the main lemmy developer, he could have obscured something like this way better in the code directly.
This issue here is very different to the xz backdoor.
The xz backdoor was well obfuscated, planned out, and inserted by another actor.This here is easy to notice, can reasonably be explained as a mistake, and can only benefit the og main devs of lemmy.
A “huh this is odd, also change yalls admin passwords” is appropriate here. Even if we got further indication it was malicious, it would still be far less crazy than the xz backdoor.
Both a strength and weakness of FOSS. There is also the solar winds hack for a proprietary analog in case anyone is curious.
Uh huh, just like how the instance/user block being horribly implemented to where it’s just a barely functional mute is just a (4 year) “oversight”.
Funny how their “oversights” just so happen to have benefits to their efforts to push authoritarianism
also on character for .world
They are even more fanatically anti - ml than their beloved ww2 nazi examples.
You can feel them foaming at the mouth.
Why make a Lemmy post about this and not just a GitHub issue?
I think it should be more public knowledge than just people who peruse the github issues. Also, it’s so trivial to fix that it will save them some time if they don’t have to close the issue after they spend literally 10-15 seconds fixing it.
There is no other reason to do it like this in a Lemmy post other than you want to publicly discredit the devs somehow. This is quite obviously a mistake and not a way to harvest admin passwords. Just fixing it and not trying to stir up shit would have been the right thing to do.
I think you should also make a GitHub issue too
It would literally take me longer to make the github issue than it would take them to fix it, by quite a big margin. You can make one for it, if you still feel super-strongly about it though.
I am a lazy unreliable person. But I find value in what you found and want it fixed.
If you don’t do it, it probably will not get fixed so fast
I cannot imagine any responsible dev who would read this notification and say anything other than “Oh shit, yeah, that’s really bad,” and fix it on the spot before they continue with whatever they had visited Lemmy to do. Like I say, it’s relevant that it takes literally seconds to grasp the issue and fix it.
I don’t fully disagree with you, I get it, github issues is where issues with the software belong. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk by suggesting that you do it. Anyone from these comments is welcome to. But, also, I am sort of curious about what their reaction will be. Finding out that kind of thing is interesting to me.
If they are actively uninterested in fixing it, however they get made aware of it, then that’s really interesting.
Pretty sure it’s an oversight but devs are overworked, really overworked
There are many more important things to fix before this.
But an issue will put it in the todo list
They’re so overworked that they spend most of their day policing other’s thoughts.
I wouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt, the devs are dodgy fuckers.
Within the last hour, dessalines has posted three things about communism that are longer than the fix for this issue.
Edit: Everyone’s got the right to do whatever they want to do. I’m not trying to accuse anyone of not spending enough time making software for me, just because occasionally they might want to do some other things with their life. The thing I’m trying to emphasize with this is how short the fix is. It’s seconds. It’s not one of those “but you have to recompile, what about this other branch” or anything like that. It’s literally a fairly critical security fix with 100% of the fix in a one-line change to a documentation file.
Oh I abso-fucking-lutely can imagine seeing someone spamming me with DMs or making a public post to try and shame me instead of commenting on the actual source project going straight into my “ignore this twat” pile. This post is just a cry for attention. You’re trying to be some sort of hero, saving us from evil or some shit.
Go make a GitHub request like a reasonable normal person and stop cluttering up others feeds with this inane bs.
I am not typing here in the hopes that they will fix it. I am typing here to communicate to other users what’s up with it. Whether or not to fix it is up to them. You’re welcome to your opinion.
It literally takes a minute to make a GitHub issue and you could have linked it here for your conversation. Probably would have helped the admins of ml change things. Especially considering that things like this get overlooked all the time in open source projects.
And look at how much time you wasted defending your position to not post a github issue. Fucking unbelievable that you will publicly complain but NOT bring the issue up with the devs
Fuck people like you
I could have that PR up in like 5 minutes. And poop while I was doing it.
--- 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_themesEdit: Just to be clear, this applies to https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/tree/main/assets which is linked to from https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/install_docker.html
ragingHungryPanda
And poop while I was doing it.
looks skeptical
Bamboo is pretty fibrous.
So do it
Just for the hell of it, I don’t know about OP, but I don’t even know how to.
I went to the relevant linked section and couldn’t find a way to raise an issue directly. I’m going to try again, and if I succeed I’ll return here and make a top level comment for anyone scrolling by and wondering. I’ve never tried to do this before, so I’ll see how it goes.
Edit: aha!
You have to go to the issues page and select the “new issue” button, where you’ll be directed to log in to github.
Which, for me, means I’m finished trying. No desire whatsoever to have another login for a one time thing. If I ever manage to learn enough code to do anything like this often enough, I’d do it, but it just isn’t worth it to satisfy my curiosity about the process.
OP managed to find the bug. He knows how to fix it. Obviously he’d know how to make an issue about it, and probably even know how to contribute his fix that he already made in the official way to the open source project.
You do not possess these skills so obviously you’re not the one who should make the issue.
Yet he decided to somehow create this public post highlighting something that could be sketchy to try to publicly discredit the devs. There is no other reason to do it like this.
Because the main Lemmy devs are authoritarian assholes.
Good catch, seems like an oversight.
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?”
💥🔫
💥🔫
💥🔫
💥🔫
💥🔫
💥🔫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?
Some people do and at least you can, which makes it much better than proprietary software, where it is impossible to find out, if they didn’t include a direct pipeline to whatever three letter agency asked them to do it.
Quick, Louis Rossmann next! Who knows who that off the rail New Yarker will do next!
rise up against dockers and the evil empire of containerization! reproducibility! microservices! middle management! security!
/j
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)
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).
Docker is not hosting. You can run docker on your own machine.
Dicker is fantastic, I don’t see how it would drive cost up. It’s not a service you pay for.
I mean, does it require more resources on the server? Compared to an OS-level installation?
Yeah 100%, it’s all Docker’s fault at the end of the day
Can you point to a repository somewhere?
Thank you!
--- 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_themesEdit: From https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/tree/main/assets
Yeah this hit me as well and it was very confusing until I found that
lemmy.mlI can’t find it on the main branch so I didn’t raise am issue
Did you use a different admin password when you did the new setup after fixing it? If not, I think you should change your admin password.
That’s right, one should. However, I’m using this only as an internal documentation tool, There’s no port forward and it’s not public. I am literally using it to take notes on a few things I’m developing.
It’s actually really nice being able to drop a whole bunch of links and have them threaded and linked between each other. It works quite well.
That seems like a mistake in the design of the compose file mentioned (not using the “{{ domain }}” pattern in the LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST environment variable) in the docs and a case of the documentation not being explicit about what needs to be changed (they refer to that variable in the README of the Lemmy UI repo when you read about the config file mentioned in the docs).
Yeah, without a doubt, it’s just an oversight.
There’s nothing malicious here.
I should have read the docker compose a bit closer when I was trying to figure it out but There’s only so many hours in the day, and sometimes you rush.
Here is the commit https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/commit/b3bd2afd6af18e71048ade7e82b541ff903a5a42
It creates the docker file and updates the docs to (among other things) point to the he file, the old being https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ansible/main/templates/docker-compose.yml.
I wonder why it does not point to the main repo. The PR does not discuss the it. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/pull/315
So it’s not in the repo, where did you get the compose? This smells like bullshit
The live docs at:
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/install_docker.html
Link to:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/main/assets/docker-compose.yml
Which is what needs to be updated.
Ahhh thank you, weird indeed.
In not the OP but I hit the same issue.
The relevant repo is:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs
If you wanted to submit a PR, I think that would be a good idea. I’ve posted the patch elsewhere in the comments.
I can’t find it on the main branch
Isn’t that even more suspicious?
What branch is OP’s build from if not main?
there seem to be a lot of typical .world sheep in these comments
I know, we don’t want our software sending our secrets to the trusted good leader, and we don’t feel like participating in places where only the leader’s viewpoint is acceptable. Unlike the non-sheep, who are fine with both those things apparently, because who wouldn’t trust the good leader.
nah, more like jumping on the bandwagon to shit on anyone conforming our presupposed biases. but sure, whatever
Yeah, it’s crazy how we all have more or less the exact same opinions, and the leader bans anyone who doesn’t have those opinions, and we’re all fine with it and in fact justify it and claim it’s right, whenever it comes up.
It’s totally insane. I have no idea how or why anyone would decide to make an account in our stuff. In fact, it makes other people suspicious of our designated good leader, even in scenarios where there isn’t otherwise a ton of reason to assume any malice.
Do you have a link to the file you used which has this problem?
The funny part about this post is that @dessalines@lemmy.ml literally will not post on this instance (or most instances besides the tankie triad) because he is a coward.
spits on @dessalines@lemmy.ml
You speak truth, and the proof is that coward will not even aknowledge this news. Mark my words… tankies are just fascists of a different degeneracy.
They did acknowledge and fix it.
They didn’t acknowledge it. They just silently fixed it (or, someone did, at least).
They’re not obligated to come in here and get yelled at, of course, and what would it accomplish. But, on the other hand, it is relevant that they can’t handle being in any environment where people can just speak freely to them, and respect is earned rather than demanded by force. There’s a certain type of mentality that just can’t cope with being in any role other than “the boss” and being able to talk down to or punish whoever they want, with no one allowed to express anything other than respect and obedience in the other direction. That is, in fact, the exact mentality that makes people suspicious of this otherwise maybe innocent issue with the software.
They responded to the pull request saying “good catch, thanks”
If there’s one tribal degenerate here it’s you my friend. They fixed this minor issue that’s been turned into a big conspiracy by you degenerate while there’s 0 actual consequence or admin saying they’ve been hacked. Please get away from internet, speak to people in real life and come back when you’re socially adpated.
Marxist-Lenninist being a totalitarian invigilation freak. Colour me surprised
