Is the installation tool required or can Shlink be setup with just env variables?

[msbt]

How Shlink is set up

• Shlink Version: 3.5.2
• PHP Version: 8.1
• How do you serve Shlink: Self-hosting, trying to create a package for Cloudron.io
• Database engine used: MySQL

Summary

Hi there! Quick question about the Shlink setup: The installation tool page in the docs says

Shlink provides a helper CLI installation tool which comes in handy to configure your instance when you are not using Shlink's docker image, and you prefer not to use environment variables.

I would prefer to use environment variables and there are several steps which are missing in the docs.

With just the env vars, the db never got initialized, I solved that by running bin/cli db:create and/or bin/cli db:migrate.

When accessing the created URLs I get a 500 server error and the logs said [2023-03-12T02:12:00.971351+00:00] [37f5e414-c981-4864-89a6-b105a1717213] Shlink.ERROR - ErrorException: require(data/proxies/__CG__ShlinkioShlinkRestEntityApiKey.php): Failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /app/data/vendor/doctrine/common/src/Proxy/AbstractProxyFactory.php:197

This I could solve by running php vendor/doctrine/orm/bin/doctrine.php orm:generate-proxies

Since I never ran vendor/bin/shlink-installer install there is also no config/params/generated_config.php, will this be a problem at some point?

Am I missing something else which is not created by only using env vars and not running the installation tool?

---

AUTHOR EDIT: See the answer here #1721 (comment)

[acelaya]

The intention is that you can use either the installation tool, or environment variables. The fact that generated_config.php does not exist in the second case should not be a problem, as long as the config is provided via env vars.

That said, it is true that there's a gap in the docs on how to properly support this use case.

Some context

On the very beginning of the project, the installation tool was the only way to set-up Shlink. A couple of years after, the official docker image was introduced, and support for env vars was added. Also, an entry point script was created, which covered some of the extra tasks performed by the installation tool.

At first it was not possible to use env vars for non-docker setups, but I realized it would be useful to support them, allowing for better automation of Shlink deployments on non-container contexts.

However, I made some assumptions here by mistake, and as you figured out, if the installation tool is never invoked, there are a couple missing critical steps that make Shlink not work. You mostly figured out everything (I'm impressed, BTW 😅).

Next steps

I'm not sure what's the best approach here. I could just document this to begin with, but I feel Shlink should provide some kind of tooling, or be smarter about this. I need to give it a thought.

Also, this is related shlinkio/shlink-installer#176

[acelaya]

In order to reproduce it, could you run this PHP script in the context you are trying to run Shlink?

<?php
var_dump(getenv());

Basically you can replace/comment out the contents of /app/code/public/index.php with the above.

[msbt]

I left all the other vars in there and sorted them alphabetically, it seems to me that there's an extra space added to every env var set for Shlink at the end, I'll investigate why that is:

array(62) { 
  ["ANONYMIZE_REMOTE_ADDR"]=> string(5) "true " 
  ["APACHE_LOCK_DIR"]=> string(17) "/var/lock/apache2" 
  ["APACHE_LOG_DIR"]=> string(16) "/var/log/apache2" 
  ["APACHE_PID_FILE"]=> string(28) "/var/run/apache2/apache2.pid" 
  ["APACHE_RUN_DIR"]=> string(16) "/var/run/apache2" 
  ["APACHE_RUN_GROUP"]=> string(8) "www-data" 
  ["APACHE_RUN_USER"]=> string(8) "www-data" 
  ["AUTO_RESOLVE_TITLES"]=> string(6) "false " 
  ["CLOUDRON"]=> string(1) "1" 
  ["CLOUDRON_API_ORIGIN"]=> string(16) "https://my.example.com" 
  ["CLOUDRON_APP_DOMAIN"]=> string(12) "slinky.example.com" 
  ["CLOUDRON_APP_HOSTNAME"]=> string(36) "redacted" 
  ["CLOUDRON_APP_ORIGIN"]=> string(20) "https://slinky.example.com" 
  ["CLOUDRON_MYSQL_DATABASE"]=> string(16) "redacted" 
  ["CLOUDRON_MYSQL_HOST"]=> string(5) "mysql" 
  ["CLOUDRON_MYSQL_PASSWORD"]=> string(48) "redacted" 
  ["CLOUDRON_MYSQL_PORT"]=> string(4) "3306" 
  ["CLOUDRON_MYSQL_URL"]=> string(96) "mysql://redacted:redacted@mysql/redacted" 
  ["CLOUDRON_MYSQL_USERNAME"]=> string(16) "redacted" 
  ["CLOUDRON_PROXY_IP"]=> string(10) "172.18.0.1" 
  ["CLOUDRON_WEBADMIN_ORIGIN"]=> string(16) "https://my.example.com" 
  ["DB_DRIVER"]=> string(6) "mysql " 
  ["DB_HOST"]=> string(6) "mysql " 
  ["DB_NAME"]=> string(17) "redacted " 
  ["DB_PASSWORD"]=> string(49) "redacted " 
  ["DB_PORT"]=> string(5) "3306 " 
  ["DB_USER"]=> string(17) "redacted " 
  ["DEBIAN_FRONTEND"]=> string(14) "noninteractive" 
  ["DEFAULT_BASE_URL_REDIRECT"]=> string(16) "https://redacted.com " 
  ["DEFAULT_DOMAIN"]=> string(13) "slinky.example.com " 
  ["DEFAULT_INVALID_SHORT_URL_REDIRECT"]=> string(16) "https://redacted.com " 
  ["DEFAULT_QR_CODE_ERROR_CORRECTION"]=> string(2) "l " 
  ["DEFAULT_QR_CODE_FORMAT"]=> string(4) "png " 
  ["DEFAULT_QR_CODE_MARGIN"]=> string(2) "0 " 
  ["DEFAULT_QR_CODE_ROUND_BLOCK_SIZE"]=> string(5) "true " 
  ["DEFAULT_QR_CODE_SIZE"]=> string(4) "300 " 
  ["DEFAULT_REGULAR_404_REDIRECT"]=> string(16) "https://redacted.com " 
  ["DEFAULT_SHORT_CODES_LENGTH"]=> string(2) "5 " 
  ["DISABLE_IP_TRACKING"]=> string(6) "false " 
  ["DISABLE_REFERRER_TRACKING"]=> string(6) "false " 
  ["DISABLE_TRACKING"]=> string(6) "false " 
  ["DISABLE_TRACKING_FROM"]=> string(11) "172.18.*.* " 
  ["DISABLE_UA_TRACKING"]=> string(6) "false " 
  ["GEOLITE_LICENSE_KEY"]=> string(1) " " 
  ["GOROOT"]=> string(20) "/usr/local/go-1.19.3" 
  ["HOSTNAME"]=> string(36) "redacted" 
  ["IS_HTTPS_ENABLED"]=> string(5) "true " 
  ["LANG"]=> string(1) "C" 
  ["MERCURE_INTERNAL_HUB_URL"]=> string(1) " " 
  ["MERCURE_JWT_SECRET"]=> string(1) " " 
  ["MERCURE_PUBLIC_HUB_URL"]=> string(1) " " 
  ["MULTI_SEGMENT_SLUGS_ENABLED"]=> string(6) "false " 
  ["PATH"]=> string(113) "/usr/local/node-18.12.1/bin:/usr/local/go-1.19.3/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin" 
  ["PWD"]=> string(9) "/app/code" 
  ["REDIRECT_APPEND_EXTRA_PATH"]=> string(6) "false " 
  ["REDIRECT_CACHE_LIFETIME"]=> string(3) "30 " 
  ["REDIRECT_STATUS_CODE"]=> string(4) "302 " 
  ["SHLVL"]=> string(1) "0" 
  ["SHORT_URL_MODE"]=> string(7) "strict " 
  ["SHORT_URL_TRAILING_SLASH"]=> string(6) "false " 
  ["TERM"]=> string(5) "xterm" 
  ["TRACK_ORPHAN_VISITS"]=> string(5) "true " 
} 

The env.sh looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
# general
export DEFAULT_DOMAIN="${CLOUDRON_APP_DOMAIN}"
export IS_HTTPS_ENABLED=true
export GEOLITE_LICENSE_KEY=
export AUTO_RESOLVE_TITLES=false
export DEFAULT_SHORT_CODES_LENGTH=5
#export DELETE_SHORT_URL_THRESHOLD=
...

[acelaya]

I have just tried to run the function throwing that error with that list of env vars, and it does not error out 🤔

In fact it's very weird. What the logic does is get the list of env vars, filter out those which key does not start with OPENSWOOLE_ (which in your case it's all of them), and then walk the result and call another function with every value.

On paper, there should be no way for the function to be called without params, because it should effectively be called only if there's a param.

it seems to me that there's an extra space added to every env var set for Shlink at the end

This should not be the cause to this specific error, but it would be good to make sure those spaces are not there, at least for the boolean values to be properly parsed.

I will put some mitigation in place, but still better to make sure the values Shlink gets are the expected ones.

Perhaps, make sure to quote all values:

export DEFAULT_DOMAIN="${CLOUDRON_APP_DOMAIN}"
export IS_HTTPS_ENABLED="true"
# export GEOLITE_LICENSE_KEY= # Do not provide this instead of providing an empty value
export AUTO_RESOLVE_TITLES="false"
export DEFAULT_SHORT_CODES_LENGTH="5"
#export DELETE_SHORT_URL_THRESHOLD=

[msbt]

I've taken a different approach now and it works. I'm still not sure what happened though, one of the main differences in the images is the PHP Version, maybe that's something to check out when I have more time:
works: PHP 8.1.15
doesn't work: PHP 8.1.2

[acelaya]

I also thought that might be a bug on PHP itself. The other user who reported this was also using PHP 8.1.2, so it fits.

However I run it under all PHP 8.1 patches and couldn't reproduce it, so I discarded that reason.

Thanks for investigating it anyway 🙂

[acelaya]

The original discussion diverted a bit, so just providing an answer here.

Shlink now has an init command that can be used to set up an instance where configuration is provided via env vars, without having to go through the interactive installation process.

See more information on the docs https://shlink.io/documentation/command-line-interface/installation-tool/#init