instllr

instllr

Systemd service installer.

Motivation

Super naive service installer that helps me deploy my side projects.

How does it work?

1. A service you'd like to deploy, is packaged (tar xz) and available as a GitHub Release.
2. The root of the package contains instllr.json - a descriptor file containing instructions on how the service should be installed and run.
3. On a target host, run the instllr:

GH_TOKEN=<gh-token> \
NODE_PATH=<path-to-nodejs-bin> \
instllr --host <my-host.domain.com> \
        --port <local-port>
        --app-env <some env; e.g., config file path> \
        install <owner>/<repo>:<tag>

1. instllr fetches the GitHub release asset and:

• creates a user and a group <my-host.domain.com>,
• untars the asset into /home/<my-host.domain.com>/...,
• creates systemd service file /etc/systemd/system/<my-host.domain.com>.service,
• creates nginx virtual host config file /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/<my-host.domain.com>.conf,
• enables the service systemctl enable --now <my-host.domain.com>,
• re-starts nginx systemctl restart nginx.

An non-standard simplification is hostname == app name.

Pre-requisites

1. Host running linux with systemd.
2. DNS A record pointing to your host.
3. Certbot standalone certificate available under /etc/letsencrypt/live/$HOST (generate one with certbot certonly --standalone).

instllr.json

Example:

{
    "require": [
        {
            "app": "node",
            "version": ["node", "--version"],
            "minVersion": "18.15.0"
        },
    ],
    "env": {
        "require": ["NODE_ENV"]
    },
    "install": ["npm", "install", "--omit", "dev"],
    "run": ["node", "main.js"]
}

Cron

If you drop instllr command with a latest tag into your crontab, you have a poor man's continuous delivery, e.g.:

* * * * * NODE_PATH=/opt/node-v18.15.0/bin instllr --app-env NODE_ENV=production --host <app-host> --port <local-port> install <gh-user>/<gh-repo> 2>&1 | logger -t CRON