manual-setup.md

Manual setup

Recommended operating system: Debian.

Install Docker

To run an SSB room you need to have a static public IP, ideally with a DNS record (i.e.<hostname.yourdomain.tld>).

On a fresh Debian 9 box, as root, run:

apt update
apt upgrade -y
apt install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common
wget https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg -O docker-gpg
sudo apt-key add docker-gpg
echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list
apt update
apt install -y docker-ce
systemctl start docker
systemctl enable docker

Install the ssb-room image

(Option A) Pull the image from docker hub

docker pull staltz/ssb-room

(Option B) Build the image from source

From GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/staltz/ssb-room.git
cd ssb-room
docker build -t staltz/ssb-room .

Create a container called room

Step 1. Create a directory on the Docker host for persisting the room's data

mkdir ~/ssb-room-data
chown -R 1000:1000 ~/ssb-room-data

(If migrating from an old server, copy the previous ssb-room-data and paste it in the new one)

Step 2. Configure the firewall to redirect the HTTP port

This assumes your server's network interface is eth0. Run ip addr to make sure what the network interface code is, it could be something, such as ens3.

sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8007

Step 3. Run the container

Create a ./create-room script:

cat > ./create-room <<EOF
#!/bin/bash
memory_limit=$(($(free -b --si | awk '/Mem\:/ { print $2 }') - 200*(10**6)))
docker run -d --name room \
   -v ~/ssb-room-data/:/home/node/.ssb/ \
   --network host \
   --restart unless-stopped \
   --memory "\$memory_limit" \
   staltz/ssb-room
EOF

where --memory sets an upper memory limit of your total memory minus 200 MB (for example: on a 1 GB server this could be simplified to --memory 800m).

Then make the script executable and run it:

chmod +x ./create-room
./create-room

Step 4. Create the ./room script

The shell script in ./room will help us command our SSB Room server:

cat > ./room <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
docker exec -it room ssb-room \$@
EOF

Then make it executable and run it:

chmod +x ./room
./room check

Setup an auto-healer container

SSB room has a built-in health check: ssb-room check.

When room becomes unhealthy, we want to kill the container, so it will be automatically restarted by Docker.

For this situation, we will use ahdinosaur/healer:

docker pull ahdinosaur/healer

docker run -d --name healer \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ahdinosaur/healer

Ensure containers are always running

Sometimes the room or healer containers will stop running (despite --restart unless-stopped!).

For this situation, we will setup two cron job scripts:

printf '#!/bin/sh\n\ndocker start room\n' | tee /etc/cron.hourly/room && chmod +x /etc/cron.hourly/room
printf '#!/bin/sh\n\ndocker start healer\n' | tee /etc/cron.hourly/healer && chmod +x /etc/cron.hourly/healer

Because docker start <service> is idempotent, it will not change anything if the service is already running, but if the service is not running it will start it.