Steps for installing forgejo without root access (eg, on Dreamhost VPS)

forgejo-user.md

Setting up Forgejo without root access / running under a single user. I devised these steps to deploy Forgejo on a Dreamhost VPS which only provided an SSH user.

• Create user folders and install forgejo to use these rather than system paths.
  • Download forgejo to ~/bin/forgejo. Make sure ~/bin is in your path (for example by editing your .bashrc file)
  • Download the forgejo.service script to ~/.config/systemd/user.
  • Create the following folders:
    • ~/var/lib/forgejo
    • ~/etc/forgejo
• Edit the forgejo.service script to run under the current user.
  • Delete the lines assigning User and Group.
  • Edit the lines assigning WorkingDirectory, ExecStart and Environment to use your revised local paths. These must be absolute, and include your username:
    • /usr/bin/forgejo is replaced by /home/my_username/bin/forgejo
    • /var/lib/forgejo is replaced by /home/my_username/var/lib/forgejo
    • /etc/forgejo is replaced by /home/my_username/etc/forgejo
• Include the --user switch in all invocations of systemctl.
  • systemctl --user enable forgejo.service
  • systemctl --user start forgejo.service
• Run loginctl enable-linger $USER (this will keep forgejo running even if you log out or reboot)