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brain dump - how to deploy this thing
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@lloyd
lloyd committed Jul 28, 2011
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## How to deploy BrowserID

This describes how to take the code here, put it on a server, and build
a service like browserid.org.

So what are we deploying, anyway?

* *the browserid server* - a node.js server which implements a web services api, stores a record of users, the email addresses they've verified, a bcrypted password, outstanding verification tokens, etc
* *the verifier* - a stateless node.js server which does cryptographic verification of assertions. This thing is hosted on browserid.org as a convenience, but people using browserid can choose to relocated it if they want to their own servers.
* *the browserid.org website* - the templates, css, and javascript that make up the visible part of browserid.org
* *the javascript/HTML dialog & include library* - this is include.js and the code that it includes, the bit that someone using browserid will include.

## Overview

Software in use

This document assumes we're deploying on an **Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS** box,
and using the following software:

* **nginx** - frontend web server that handles static content and
serves as a reverse proxy for node.js servers running on local host
config: `/etc/nginx/conf/nginx.conf`

* **node.js** - all non-static servers run with node. modules are installed
using npm in `/home/http/node_modules`

* **monit** - provides monitoring and automatic restarting of node.js servers
when they go down (by accident or upon code publishing)
config files are: `/etc/monitrc`, and `/etc/monit.d/*`. Also see the
helper script that starts node servers: `/etc/monit.d/start_node_server`

* **gitolite** - installed under the git user to provide multi-user ssh based
git access. post-update hook handles updating code and restarting servers.
see that here: `/home/git/.gitolite/hooks/common/post-update`

### Permissions conventions

Permissions conventions:
* *nginx* runs as user 'www-data'
* *node.js* servers run as user 'www-data'
* when git pushing, all publishing and restarting runs as user 'git'

## Setup

### 1. gitolite!

*This step is optional*. gitlite turns a normal unix machine into a
"git server". All that gitolite does is provide some utilities and
the infrastructure required to make it possible for multiple users to
authenticate to a particular user on the box using ssh keys for the
purposes of updating code. While requiring a bit of setup, in practice
this is a fabulously lightweight way to make the releases process sing.

Let's get started:

1. create a "git" user: `sudo adduser git`
2. install git if required: `sudo apt-get install git-core`
3. become user git: `sudo su -s /bin/bash git`
4. hop into your home directory: `cd`
5. [This.](http://sitaramc.github.com/gitolite/doc/1-INSTALL.html#_non_root_method)
6. add a browserid repo. [This.](http://sitaramc.github.com/gitolite/doc/2-admin.html#_adding_users_and_repos).

At this point you've morphed your servers into git servers. Go ahead and
add a remote to your local copy of the browserid repo and push to it:
`git remote add shortaliasforthenewvm git@myserver:browserid.git && git push --all shortaliasforthenewvm`

Now you have a clone of your browserid repository that's trivial to update.
You can use ssh keys with passphrases and ssh-agent if you are less of an
optimist.

### 2. install node.js!

At present we're running node.js 0.4.10. Lastest along the 4 line should
work:

1. install dev libs and tools to build node: g++ & libssl-dev
2. `./configure && make && sudo make install`
3. now install npm: `git clone https://github.com/isaacs/npm.git && cd npm && sudo make install`
4. intstall uglify-js, required to create production resources:
`npm install -g uglify-js`

### 3. Install software prerequisites

Subsequent steps use different software which you might need to install.

* **curl** - used to iniate http requests from the cmd line (to kick the browserid server)
* **java** - used to minify css
* **libsqlite3-dev** - database libraries

### 4. Set up post-update hook

*This step is optional* - if you want to manually update code you
probably skipped step #1, you can skip this one as well. All you need
to do is check out the code from github and run node.

Given we've now got a simple way to push updates to the server, and
we've got npm and node running, let's get the software running! The task
here is as a `post-update` hook (triggered by pushing changes to the server)
to have the server update its code and restart the server.

To get this done, we'll create a "post-update hook" which will live on your
server under the git user's directory:

First, [do this] to add a blank executable post-update hook.

[do this]: http://sitaramc.github.com/gitolite/doc/2-admin.html#_using_hooks

Now, here's a full sample script that you can start with in that
post update hook, annotated to help you follow along:

#!/bin/bash

# only run these commands if it's the browserid repo bein' pushed
if [ "x$GL_REPO" == 'xbrowserid' ] ; then
# create a temporary directory where we'll stage new code
NEWCODE=`mktemp -d`
echo "staging code to $NEWCODE"
mkdir -p $NEWCODE
git archive --format=tar dev | tar -x -C $NEWCODE

echo "generating production resources"
cd $NEWCODE/browserid && ./compress.sh && cd -

# stop the servers
curl -o --url http://localhost:62700/code_update > /dev/null 2>&1
curl -o --url http://localhost:62800/code_update > /dev/null 2>&1

# now move code into place, and keep a backup of the last code
# that was in production in .old
echo "moving updated code into place"
rm -rf /home/browserid/code.old
mv /home/browserid/code{,.old}
mv $NEWCODE /home/browserid/code
ln -s /home/browserid/var_browserid /home/browserid/code/browserid/var
ln -s /home/browserid/var_verifier /home/browserid/code/verifier/var

echo "fixing permissions"
find /home/browserid/code -exec chgrp www-data {} \; > /dev/null 2>&1
find /home/browserid/code -type d -exec chmod 0775 {} \; > /dev/null 2>&1
find /home/browserid/code -type f -exec chmod ga+r {} \; > /dev/null 2>&1
find /home/browserid/code -type f -perm /u+x -exec chmod g+x {} \; > /dev/null 2>&1

echo "updating dependencies"
ln -s /home/browserid/node_modules /home/browserid/code/node_modules
cd /home/browserid/code && npm install && cd -
fi

### 5. get node servers running

At this point, pushing code to gitolite will cause /home/browserid/code to be updated. Now
we need to get the servers running! Manually we can verify that the servers will run.
For the browser id server:

cd /home/browserid/code/browserid && sudo -u www-data ./run.js

And for the verifier:

cd /home/browserid/code/verifier && sudo -u www-data ./run.js

Now let's set up [monit] to restart the node.js servers:

1. install monit: `sudo apt-get install monit`
2. enable monit by editing `/etc/default/monit`
3. configure monit. make `/etc/monit/monitrc` look like this:

set daemon 10
set logfile /var/log/monit.log
include /etc/monit.d/*

4. Add a little utility script (`chmod +x`) to run the node servers at `/etc/monit/start_node_server`:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/node $1 > $(dirname $1)/error.log 2>&1 &

5. create a file to run the verifier at `/etc/monit.d/verifier`:

check host verifier with address 127.0.0.1
start program = "/etc/monit/start_node_server /home/browserid/code/verifier/run.js"
as uid "www-data" and gid "www-data"
stop program = "/usr/bin/pkill -f '/usr/local/bin/node /home/browserid/code/verifier/run.js'"
if failed port 62800 protocol HTTP
request /ping.txt
with timeout 10 seconds
then restart

5. create a file to run the browserid server at `/etc/monit.d/browserid`:

check host browserid.org with address 127.0.0.1
start program = "/etc/monit/start_node_server /home/browserid/code/browserid/run.js"
as uid "www-data" and gid "www-data"
stop program = "/usr/bin/pkill -f '/usr/local/bin/node /home/browserid/code/browserid/run.js'"
if failed port 62700 protocol HTTP
request /ping.txt
with timeout 10 seconds
then restart

6. verify servers are running! check `/var/log/monit.log`, curl ports 62700 and 62800, and verify servers are restarted at 10s if you kill em!

### 6. set up nginx!

At this point we've got automatic server restart, simple git based code publishing, and all of the software prerequisites installed on the box. The final bit of work is to set up nginx in such a way that it will properly proxy requests to the external interface to the proper node server:

1. remove any other webservers that come with your vm (like apache)
2. install nginx: `sudo apt-get install nginx`
3. configure nginx, make `/etc/nginx/nginx.conf` look like this:

user www-data;
worker_processes 1;

error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
worker_connections 1024;
# multi_accept on;
}

http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
sendfile on;

keepalive_timeout 65;
tcp_nodelay on;

gzip on;
gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_types text/html application/json application/javascript text/css application/x-font-ttf application/atom+xml;

include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

4. and how about configuring the webserver:

server {
listen 80 default;
server_name browserid.org;

# disallow external server restart.
location = /code_update {
internal;
}

# pass /verify invocations to the verifier
location /verify {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:62800;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
}

# pass everything else the browserid server
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:62700;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
}
}

5. restart your webserver and you're all done: `sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

easy, right?


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