faq.md

v2 OSS and Enterprise FAQ

Coder's docs are the primary source of truth for installing, configuring and using Coder.

But I come across commonly asked questions or tricky scenarios where these tips may get you unstuck and help you out. Good luck! 🥳

How to add an enterprise license

Contact https://coder.com/trial or [email protected] to get a v2 enterprise trial key.

Install your Coder CLI and server to the latest release

If the license is a text string

coder licenses add -l 1f5...765

If the license is in a file

coder licenses add -f <path/filename>

I installed Coder, created a workspace but the icons do not load

An important concept to understand is that Coder creates workspaces which have an agent that must be able to reach the coder server.

If the CODER_ACCESS_URL is not accessible from a workspace, the workspace may build, but the agent cannot reach Coder, and thus the missing icons. e.g., Terminal, IDEs, Apps.

By default, coder server automatically creates an Internet-accessible reverse proxy so that workspaces you create can reach the server.

If you are doing a standalone install, e.g., on a Macbook and want to build workspaces in Docker Desktop, everything is self-contained and workspaces (containers in Docker Desktop) can reach the Coder server.

coder server --access-url http://localhost:3000 --address 0.0.0.0:3000

Even coder server which creates a reverse proxy, will let you use http://localhost to access Coder from a browser.

I updated a template, and an existing workspace based on that template fails to start.

I used to be a big fan of input variables in my templates e.g., prompt the user to choose a code-server VS Code IDE release, a container image, a VS Code extension. But you have to understand if you remove any of those values in a template, existing workspaces that use those removed values will fail to start since the Terraform state will not be in sync with the new template.

But there's little known CLI sub-command called update that will re-prompt the user to re-enter the input variables thus saving your workspace from a failed status.

coder update --always-prompt <workspace name>

I'm running coder on a VM with systemd but latest release installed isn't showing up.

One of my Coder deployments is a 2 shared vCPU systemd service.

When I upgrade to the latest release, you need to reload the daemon then restart the Coder service. This ensures the systemd daemon does not try to reference to previous Coder release service since the unit file has changed.

curl -fsSL https://coder.com/install.sh | sh
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart coder.service

I'm using the built-in Postgres database and forgot admin email I set up.

1. Run the following coder server to retrieve the psql connection URL which includes the database user and password.
2. psql into Postgres, and do a select query on the users table.
3. Restart the coder server, pull up the Coder UI and log in (hope you remembered your password 😆)

coder server postgres-builtin-url
psql "postgres://coder@localhost:53737/coder?sslmode=disable&password=I2S...pTk"

How to find out Coder's latest Terraform provider version?

Coder is on the HashiCorp's TerraForm registry. Check this frequently to make sure you are on the latest version.

Sometimes you can notice the version has changed and resource configurations have either been deprecated or new ones added when you get warnings or errors creating and pushing templates.

How can I set up TLS for my deployment and not create a signed certificate?

Caddy is an easy-to-configure reverse proxy that also automatically creates certificates from Let's Encrypt. Install docs here You can start Caddy as a systemd service.

The Caddyfile configuration will like this where 127.0.0.1:3000 is your CODER_ACCESS_URL:

coder.example.com {

	reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:3000

	tls {
		issuer acme {
			email [email protected]		
		}		
	}

}

I'm using Caddy as my reverse proxy in front of Coder. How do I set up a wildcard domain for port forwarding?

You need to give Caddy your DNS provider's credentials to create wildcard certificates. This involves building the Caddy binary from source with the DNS provider plugin added. e.g., Google Cloud DNS provider here

You will need to add Go to your host running Coder to compile Caddy. Then replace the existing Caddy binary in usr/bin and restart the Caddy service.

The updated Caddyfile configuration will like this:

*.coder.example.com, coder.example.com {

	reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:3000

	tls {
		issuer acme {
			email [email protected]
			dns googleclouddns {
				gcp_project my-gcp-project
			}			
		}		
	}

}

Can I use local or remote Terraform Modules in Coder templates?

One way is to reference a Terraform module from a GitHub repo to avoid duplication and then just extend it or pass template-specific parameters/resources

# template1/main.tf
module "central-coder-module" {
  source = "github.com/yourorg/central-coder-module"
  myparam = "custom-for-template1"
}

resource "ebs_volume` `custom_template1_only_resource ` {
}

# template2/main.tf
module "central-coder-module" {
  source = "github.com/yourorg/central-coder-module"
  myparam = "custom-for-template2"
  myparam2 = "bar"
}

resource "aws_instance` `custom_template2_only_resource ` {
}

Another way using local modules is to symlink the module directory inside the template directory and then tar the template.

ln -s modules template_1/modules tar -cvh -C ./template_1 | coder templates <push|create> -d - <name>

Issue 6117 Issue 5677 Coder docs