server-linux.md

server setup

Ubuntu setup / installing

For a remote server, SSH in to login with ssh [user]@[ip address or domain of server] - i.e. ssh root@111.111.111.111 then type the password for that user.

1. add users
   • adduser lmadera (then follow prompts)
   • give sudo privilges adduser lmadera sudo
   • optional but recommended - add group and add user to group
     • groupadd developers
     • add user to group: usermod -a -G developers lmadera
2. log out of root then re-login as the user you just created
3. sudo apt-get update
4. Install git: sudo apt-get install git-core
5. Install node.js
   • https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager
     • scroll down to the 'Ubuntu' section and follow the instructions / commands there
     • instructions say to symlink at the end but this didn't work / it wasn't necessary?
       • sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node
       • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18130164/nodejs-vs-node-on-ubuntu-12-04
       • UPDATE: got an error: failed to create symbolic link /usr/bin/node': File exists` - so maybe it's already done / don't need to do this?
   • optional but recommended
     1. run on port 80 (assuming node runs on port 3000 - change according to config) sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3000. This is only if using one server/domain on this host and want to be able to access it without typing in a port number at the end of the url - i.e. 'http://mydomain.com' instead of 'http://mydomain.com:3000'
        • see more details: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7929563/node-js-express-app-wont-start-listening-on-port-80
        • if using https, redirect port 443 as well / instead: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7907102/how-can-i-configure-expressjs-to-handle-both-http-and-https
          • sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3000
          • sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3002
        • removing iptables rules: http://lubos.rendek.org/remove-all-iptables-prerouting-nat-rules
     2. OPTIONAL / not really used anymore: create 'node' user for using with things like 'forever' (since it's user specific so whatever user started it is the only one who can stop it..)
        • use su node to switch to node users
6. Install MongoDB - NOTE: maybe want to use hosted service (i.e. MongoLab or MongoHQ) to save on diskspace - see below
   • http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-debian-or-ubuntu-linux/ (have to go through some setup steps before can run the standard apt-get install command..)
     • Use "touch" to create a new file
     • NOTE: use a 64 bit build since the 32 bit builds of mongo/ubuntu have a 2GB memory limit! http://www.mongodb.org/downloads#32-bit-limit
7. Install PhantomJS
   1. sudo apt-get install phantomjs

Note on file sizes / server space

May want to use MongoLab or MongoHQ or another hosted/cloud MongoDB solution since MongoDB can easily take up 6GB - journal of 3ish GB (apparently it doesn't go past this though?) plus the data itself plus log files plus some other stuff.

MongoDB and node forever took up space; here's one of my servers that maxed out with 20GB - forever though was mostly log files and while forever cleanlogs didn't seem to work, I was able to just delete the file(s) that were large:

• / 18G
  • /var 11G
    • /lib 6.4G
      • /mongodb 6.1G
        • /journal 3.1G
    • /log 1.2G
      • /mongodb 1.2G
    • /www 2.4G
  • /home 5.1G
    • /luke 2.0G
      • /.forever 1.3G
    • /node 2.3G
      • /.forever 2.3G
  • /usr 2.1G
• after I cleared the forever and mongodb logs though I got it down to 14GB, so that was good.

Getting (& updating) files from your local (development) code

• see deploy.md file

AWS (Amazon Web Services) setup

Since it can be tricky.. Digital Ocean and Rackspace are much simpler!

1. create new (EC2) instance
   • Ubuntu (most recent - 12.04, 64bit)
2. Create or use existing keypair. SSH public key will be generated and private key (as .pem file) will be available for download. We'll use this for SSH access later.
3. Create or use existing security group
   1. open ports
      • 22 for SSH
      • 80 for HTTP
      • any other needed ports: 3000-3100 for node and socket
4. Create elastic IP and associate with instance
5. Use keypair (.pem file) to setup public key authentication to be able to SSH into the instance.
   • For Ubuntu, the "username" is "ubuntu" (other forums say "root" or "ec2-user" but those don't work for Ubuntu at least)
   • WINDOWS
     • navigate to ~/.ssh folder and create a new file (i.e. id_rsa.[project_name]) and paste the private key info downloaded from AWS (the .pem file contents) into it
     • open the "config" file in the ~/.ssh folder (or create it if it doesn't exist) and then add lines: Host [elastic ip address] IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.[project_name]
     • Connect (via git bash - cygwin doesn't seem to work) ssh ubuntu@[elastic ip address]
6. SSH in (i.e. ssh ubuntu@[elastic ip]) then set up Ubuntu as normal (see guide below)
7. set up additional (non-root) users
   • public key authentication (recommended way over password authentication) http://utkarshsengar.com/2011/01/manage-multiple-accounts-on-1-amazon-ec2-instance/
8. SES (email)
   1. need an access key id & secret)
      • http://aws.amazon.com/iam/
   2. may need to synchronize system clock with amazon clock (UTC) if it doesn't work
      • sudo /usr/sbin/ntpdate 0.north-america.pool.ntp.org 1.north-america.pool.ntp.org 2.north-america.pool.ntp.org 3.north-america.pool.ntp.org
      • http://www.mindgeek.net/amazon-ws/amazon-ses-request-expired-it-must-be-within-300secsof-server-time/
   3. need to request "production access" and add verified "from" email addresses. In sandbox mode, need to also verify "to" email addresses.