provisioning-servers-for-hosting.md

Provisioning webserver

In this guide we'll explain how to use the included provisioning script to install a Pipit generated application on a server.

Requirements (webserver, aka ansible host)

The server should have these applications/packages installed:

• Linux (Ubuntu 20.04+ is preffered)
• Nginx
• uWSGI
• Python 3.11+
• PostgreSQL 12+
• PostGIS for PostgreSQL
• GDAL (required for PostGIS)
• Node 20+
• PM2
• psycopg2-binary (this is required for the provision script that will create db and users)

Linux should have these users (with passwordless login using RSA keys):

• "root" - Used when provisioning web server
• "deploy" - Used for deployment

Configuration:

• Systemd jobs for Nginx, uWSGI and pm2
• Nginx configuration are stored at /mnt/persist/nginx/conf.d/*
• Node configuration are stored at /mnt/persist/nodejs/*
• Your web applications are stored at /mnt/persist/www/*
• The root user can access the psql shell without password

Requirements (your computer, aka control node)

• A fully generated Pipit project
• Rsync installed
• A MacOS or Linux computer (Ansible does not support Windows)
• Access to the webserver over ssh with both the "root" and "deploy" user

Guide

• Begin by going to the deploy dir in your project and install Ansible

  >>> cd deploy
  >>> python3 -m venv venv
  >>> . venv/bin/activate
  >>> pip install -r requirements.txt
  

• Make sure you can connect to the server by pinging it

  >>> ansible -i stages/stage.yml webservers -m ping
  stage1 | SUCCESS => {
      "ansible_facts": {
          "discovered_interpreter_python": "/usr/bin/python3"
      },
      "changed": false,
      "ping": "pong"
  }
  

• After this, we install Ansistrano:

  >>> ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml
  

• Now that we have everything installed, lets run the provisioning:

• For stage

  >>> ansible-playbook provision.yml -i stages/stage.yml
  

• For prod

  >>> ansible-playbook provision.yml -i stages/prod.yml
  

• This will script will run the necessary steps to make sure your application is ready to be deployed

• The next step is to run a deploy to sent our application to the server and start it

• For stage

  >>> ansible-playbook deploy.yml -i stages/stage.yml
  

• For prod

  >>> ansible-playbook deploy.yml -i stages/prod.yml
  

• Done!

Troubleshooting

• I'm having issues running the initial migrations: Permission denied to create extension "postgis" HINT: Must be superuser to create this extension

  • Connect to your server as root/superuser
  • Run psql on the server
  • Open your db \c mydb
  • Run CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS postgis

• I'm getting the error Failed to import the required Python library when running Creates postgres database when running playbook in --check mode

  • It's a known issue, because of this check mode is not supported for the provision playbook

Note

• This script does not perform server provisioning, only application provisioning. But there are plenty of guides on how to do this.