Jul 10 2017

A Home-Based Ubuntu 16.04 Production Server with Salvaged Equipment

Preface

As I’ve often griped before, my cloud service provider (cloudatcost.com) is not exactly reliable. I’m currently on Day 3 waiting for their tech support to address several downed servers. Three days isn’t even that bad considering I’ve waited up to two weeks in the past. In any case, though I wish them success, I’m sick of their nonsense and am starting to migrate my servers out of the cloud and into my house. As a cloud company that routinely loses its customers’ data, it’s prudent to prepare for their likely bankruptcy and closure.

I have an old smashed-up AMD Quad Core laptop I’m going to use as a server. The screen was totally broken, so as a laptop it’s kind of useless anyway. It’s a little lightweight on resources (only 4 GB of RAM), but this is much more than I’m used to. I used unetbootin to create an Ubuntu 16.04 bootable USB and installed the base system.

What follows are the common steps I take when setting up a production server. This bare minimum approach is a process I repeat frequently, so it’s worth documenting here. Once the OS is installed…

Change the `root` password

The install should put the created user into the sudo group. Change the root password with that user:

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sudo su
passwd
exit

Update OS

An interesting thing happened during install… I couldn’t install additional software (i.e., open-ssh), so I skipped it. When it came time to install vim, I discovered I didn’t have access to any of the repositories. The answer here shed some light on the situation, but didn’t really resolve anything.

I ended up copying the example sources.list from the documentation to fix the problem:

1	sudo cp /usr/share/doc/apt/examples/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list

I found out later that this contained all repositories for Ubuntu 14.04. So I ended up manually pasting this in /etc/apt/sources.list:

# deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 16.04 LTS _Xenial Xerus_ - Release amd64 (20160420.1)]/ xenial main restricted
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security main restricted universe multiverse
# deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial partner

After that, update/upgrade worked (make sure it doesn’t actually work before messing around):

1 2	sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade

Install `open-ssh`

The first thing I do is configure my machine for remote access. As above, I couldn’t install open-ssh during the OS installation, for some reason. After sources.list was sorted out, it all worked:

1	sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Check the official Ubuntu docs for configuration tips.

While I’m here, though, I need to set a static IP…

1	sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

Paste this (or similar) under # The primary network interface, as per lewis4u.

auto enp0s25
iface enp0s25 inet static
address 192.168.0.150
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

Then flush, restart, and verify that the settings are correct:

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sudo ip addr flush enp0s25
sudo systemctl restart networking.service
ip add

Start `ssh`

My ssh didn’t start running automatically after install. I did this to make ssh run on startup:

1	sudo systemctl enable ssh

And then I did this, which actually starts the service:

1	sudo service ssh start

Open a port on the router

This step, of course, depends entirely on the make and model of router behind which the server is operating. For me, I access the adminstrative control panel by logging in at 192.168.0.1 on my LAN.

I found the settings I needed to configure on my Belkin router under Firewall -> Virtual Servers. I want to serve up web apps (both HTTP and HTTPS) and allow SSH access. As such, I configured three access points by providing the following information for each:

Description
Inbound ports (i.e., 22, 80, and 443)
TCP traffic type (no UDP)
The private/static address I just set on my server
Inbound private ports (22, 80, and 443 respectively)

Set up DNS

Again, this depends on where you registered your domain. I pointed a domain I have registered with GoDaddy to my modems’s IP address, which now receives requests and forwards them to my server.

With my server, router, and DNS all properly configured, I don’t need to be physically sitting in front of my machine anymore. As such, I complete the following steps logged in remotely.

Set up `app` user

I like to have one user account control app deployment. Toward that end, I create an app user and add him to the sudo group:

1 2	sudo adduser app sudo adduser app sudo

Install the essentials

`git`

Won’t get far without git:

1	sudo apt install git

`vim`

My favourite editor is vim, which is not installed by default.

1	sudo apt install vim

NERDTree

My favourite vim plugin:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle
cd ~/.vim/autoload
wget https://raw.github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen/HEAD/autoload/pathogen.vim
vim ~/.vimrc

Add this to the .vimrc file:

call pathogen#infect()
map <C-n> :NERDTreeToggle<CR>
set softtabstop=2
set expandtab

Save and exit:

1 2	cd ~/.vim/bundle git clone https://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree.git

Now, when running vim, hit ctrl-n to toggle the file tree view.

Docker

Current installation instructions can be found here. The distilled process is as follows:

1 2	sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg \| sudo apt-key add -

You can verify the key fingerprint:

1	sudo apt-key fingerprint 0EBFCD88

Which should return something like this:

pub   4096R/0EBFCD88 2017-02-22
      Key fingerprint = 9DC8 5822 9FC7 DD38 854A  E2D8 8D81 803C 0EBF CD88
      uid                  Docker Release (CE deb) <docker@docker.com>
      sub   4096R/F273FCD8 2017-02-22

Add repository and update:

1 2	sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable" sudo apt update

Install:

1	sudo apt install docker-ce

Create a docker user group:

1	sudo groupadd docker

Add yourself to the group:

1	sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Add the app user to the group as well:

1	sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Logout, login, and test docker without sudo:

1	docker run hello-world

If everything works, you should see the usual Hello, World! message.

Configure docker to start on boot:

1	sudo systemctl enable docker

`docker-compose`

This downloads the current stable version. Cross reference it with that offered here.

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su
curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.14.0/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` > /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Install command completion while still root:

1 2	curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/docker/compose/master/contrib/completion/bash/docker-compose -o /etc/bash_completion.d/docker-compose exit

Test:

1	docker-compose --version

`node`

These steps are distilled from here.

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cd ~
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x -o nodesource_setup.sh
sudo bash nodesource_setup.sh

Now install:

1	sudo apt-get install nodejs build-essential

`Ruby`

The steps followed conclude with installing rails. I only install ruby:

sudo apt-get install git-core curl zlib1g-dev build-essential libssl-dev libreadline-dev libyaml-dev libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev python-software-properties libffi-dev nodejs

Using rbenv:

cd
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
exec $SHELL

git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
exec $SHELL

rbenv install 2.4.0

That last step can take a while…

1 2	rbenv global 2.4.0 ruby -v

Install Bundler:

1	gem install bundler

Done!

There it is… all my usual favourites on some busted up piece of junk laptop. I expect it to be exactly 1000% more reliable than cloudatcost.com.

libertyseeds.ca

Open Source Ministry

vim

A Home-Based Ubuntu 16.04 Production Server with Salvaged Equipment

Preface

Change the `root` password

Update OS

Install `open-ssh`

Start `ssh`

Open a port on the router

Set up DNS

Set up `app` user

Install the essentials

`git`

`vim`

NERDTree

Docker

`docker-compose`

`node`

`Ruby`

Done!

Set up NERDTree for vim

pathogen.vim

NERDTree

vim

Preface

Change the root password

Update OS

Install open-ssh

Start ssh

Open a port on the router

Set up DNS

Login via SSH

Set up app user

Install the essentials

git

vim

NERDTree

Docker

docker-compose

node

Ruby

Done!

pathogen.vim

NERDTree

Change the `root` password

Install `open-ssh`

Start `ssh`

Set up `app` user

`git`

`vim`

`docker-compose`

`node`

`Ruby`