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Why is Ghost not installing correctly?

Posted on October 2, 2018

Okay so I already have a droplet dedicated to one Ghost blog. I wanted to create a test droplet today so I went ahead and used the one-click app to install Ghost with Ubuntu 18.04. I logged into the console once the droplet was created.

Ghost installer ran automatically up until the point where it notifies you of entering your domain and email for SSL. After pressing ENTER, the installer just exists and when I check /var/www/ghost/ the directory is empty. Am I doing something wrong here?

This I’ve tried:

  • Rebuilding the droplet
  • Destroying and recreating a droplet
  • Trying to install on a droplet in a different location


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✔ Checking system Node.js version
✔ Checking logged in user
✔ Checking current folder permissions
✔ Checking operating system compatibility
✔ Checking for a MySQL installation
✔ Checking memory availability
✔ Checking for latest Ghost version
✔ Setting up install directory
✖ Downloading and installing Ghost v2.33.0
A ProcessError occurred.

Message: Command failed: yarn install --no-emoji --no-progress
warning ghost@2.33.0: The engine "cli" appears to be invalid.
error csv-parser@2.3.1: The engine "node" is incompatible with this module. Expected version ">= 8.16.0". Got "8.10.0"
error Found incompatible module.

Got this error with One Click install. Here’s a quick run down of what I did to resolve in the event that someone else encounters the same issue.

  1. change to ghost user
sudo -i -u ghost-mgr

  1. remove botched/broken install directory
sudo rm -r /var/www/ghost
  1. add nodejs source (maybe unnecessary, idk)
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x | sudo -E bash 
4) run updates

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade

5) update nodejs

sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

6) recreate install dir and set permissions 

sudo mkdir /var/www/ghost sudo chown ghost-mgr:ghost-mgr /var/www/ghost

7) re-run install command. (just copy this from the terminal output of the failed install to get the command with your MYSQL pw. Will look like:

ghost install --auto --db=mysql --dbhost=localhost --dbname=ghost_production --dbuser=ghost --dbpass=veryNicePassword --dir=/var/www/ghost --start


That did the trick for me. Worth note, I first tried on a $5 droplet and then moved to a $10 droplet based on comments above. I don't think that matters though and I'm guessing the above fix would work on $5 droplet as well. 

Same problem here. Ended up installing it on my own.

Welll… bummerrrrrrrr… it doesn’t work… great. I was hoping to roll out a Ghost site in 1.2.3… but nothing…

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