HOW_DO_I.md

How Do I XXX in awsbox?

This is a cookbook of how to Get Common Things Done with awsbox.

How Do I Push Code?

If you use awsbox from an existing project, a git "remote" will be added for you with the name of the machine you chose (with the -n flag).

How Do I SSH into my VM?

You can SSH as the user that runs your app:

$ ssh app@[ip address]

Or as an admin user with sudo privileges

$ ssh ec2-user@[ip address]

How Do I Check My Server Logs?

$ ssh app@[ip address] 'tail -F var/log/*'

How Do I Restart The Web Services On My Server?

$ ssh app@[ip address] 'forever restartall'

How Do I Give Other People Access to the VM?

Add their key to ~ec2-user/.ssh/authorized_keys to give access to administer the machine and the app.

Alternately, to only give app access, turn the symlink in ~app/.ssh/authorized_keys to a real file, and add your buddy's key there:

$ cp -L ~/.ssh/authorized_keys ~/.ssh/foo && mv .ssh/foo .ssh/authorized_keys
$ # now add the key

How Do I Enable SSL?

SSL is already enabled with a self signed SSL certificate. You can update the SSL credentials thusly:

$ scp myprivatekey.pem proxy@[ip address]:key.pem
$ scp mycert.pem proxy@[ip address]:cert.pem
$ ssh proxy@[ip address] 'forever restartall'

How Do I Disable SSL?

At creation time you can pass --ssl=disable to create the instance with SSL disabled.

Post creation, you can SSH in as the proxy user, and update config.json to contain:

{ "ssl": "disable" }

Then restart the proxy with forever restartall.

How Do I Force Connections to use SSL?

You can always use HTTP headers (Strict-Transport-Security), but even then, a user's first request will not be encrypted. To cause all HTTP traffic to be redirected to HTTPS, you can SSH in as the proxy user and update config.json to contain:

{ "ssl": "force" }

Then restart the proxy with forever restartall.

How Do I Use WebSockets?

Because we use http-proxy for HTTP forwarding, it should Just Work. Have a look at the socket.io example for a tiny focused example which uses WebSockets via the excellent socket.io library.

How Do I Install Software?

Use yum.

$ ssh ec2-user@[ip address]
$ yum search memcached
$ yum install memcached.x86_64