• Traefik starter kit for VPS
  • Prerequisites
  • Step1 - Configure and start Traefik
  • Step2 - Mount a Mysql database with Phpmyadmin
  • Deploy your projects
    • For Simple-MVC & Symfony starter kits.
    • Let's Encrypt SSL certificates explanations
  • Troubleshooting & useful commands

Traefik starter kit for VPS

Prerequisites

Must be installed on the VPS before anything else

• Docker
• Docker Compose
• Git
• htpasswd utility from apache2-utils

See Prerequisites page for more information.

Step1 - Configure and start Traefik

First, clone this repository in a traefik directory and cd in it.

git clone https://github.com/WildCodeSchool/vps-traefik-starter-kit.git traefik
cd traefik

The file install.sh is ready to configure and start Traefik automatically.
Create .env file from .env.sample in /data directory, edit values and save.

cp ./data/.env.sample ./data/.env
nano ./data/.env

Var	Description
HOST	Your main domain pointing to the VPS. You can write localhost when running Docker in local.
LETS_ENCRYPT_EMAIL	Used to generate letsencrypt certificate. Write a valid email so you will receive renew reminders.
USER_NAME	User login to Traefik dashboard. Will also be used to create a user with all privileges when installing the database. Can access to database from external container on port 3306
USER_PASSWORD	User password to log in Traefik dashboard. Will be used for main user database too.
DATABASE_SUBDOMAIN_NAME	Name given to the container and used to create docker volume database-db, container database-db and subdomain.
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD	Root password needed when connect to mysql from internal service container. Connection with root is disabled from external.
APP_SECRET	Secret key needed to produce JWT tokens (only for the JS template).

Once this is done, simply run the script.

bash install.sh

Traefik is then ready to process proxy requests.
The Traefik dashboard is accessible at https://traefik.your_domain.dev with the credentials you provided (your_domain.dev replaced by your domain).

Step2 - Mount a Mysql database with Phpmyadmin

If you have correctly filled in all the fields in the .env file from step 1, just run the following command.

docker compose --env-file ./data/.env -f ./database/docker-compose.yml up -d

When done, PhpMyadmin is reachable at something like https://pma.database.your_domain.dev where database depends on the value of DATABASE_SUBDOMAIN_NAME and your_domain.dev on the value of HOST. This database will be persisted thanks to database-db volume and reachable from any external container with database-db container name.
Example:

DATABASE_URL="mysql://user:password@database-db:3306/my_app?serverVersion=8&charset=utf8mb4"

Deploy your projects

Warning: ensure your GitHub repository is public, or the deployment process will fail.

For Simple-MVC & Symfony starter kits.

The php-project.sh file in the deploy directory can be used by Github action to trigger deployment, updates and build of Docker containers automatically. You just have to add on each git repository three following secret variables and an environment variable as shown below.

Name	Type	Path from git repository	Description
SSH_HOST	secret	/settings/secrets/actions	Your VPS IP address
SSH_USER	secret	/settings/secrets/actions	Your ssh user name
SSH_PASSWORD	secret	/settings/secrets/actions	Your ssh user password
PROJECT_NAME	variable	/settings/variables/actions	The name you want to give to the project. This name will be used to generate the Docker container as well as the subdomain and associated services (e.g. https://project-name.your-domain.wilders.dev, https://mailhog.project-name.your-domain.wilders.dev, etc.). ⚠️ Be careful not to use underscores in the project name but rather hyphens.
APP_ENV	variable	/settings/variables/actions	[optional] Deployment environment (dev, test, prod)

No prior configuration is required. Deployments are based on the Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml files integrated in each project.
The projects are automatically cloned in the ~/projects directory in the root of the user folder. The names of the git repositories used to generate the associated databases. That's all!

Github CLI can be very useful to generate very quickly the secret variables from an .env file. See https://cli.github.com/manual/gh_secret_set for further information.

For JS template projects

Same configuration as above. js-project.sh will be triggered by the Github action workflow.

Let's Encrypt SSL certificates explanations

SSl certificates are generated by Let's Encrypt automatically each time a project is deployed for the first time and store on the server in the /traefik/data/acme.json file. Certificates have a lifetime of 90 days. You will receive renewal notifications by e-mail according to this period and for each domain name. To regenerate one or more certificates, simply restart Traefik. Run the command below from the /traefik folder:

bash restart.sh

Troubleshooting & useful commands

In the event of a problem, you can consult the real-time logs of each project's Docker images.

cd ~/traefik/deploy && bash logs-project.sh <name-of-the-project-directory>
#example
#cd ~/traefik/deploy && bash logs-project.sh 2023-03-remote-fr-project-1

If needed, restart Docker

sudo service docker restart

Clean stopped containers, dangling images and dangling build cache

docker system prune -a