Deployment Manual

To get started with the deployment process, ensure that the system is running Cent OS 7.

It's really important to ensure it is running Cent OS 7. Otherwise, this process will not work.

Before getting started

Just ensure you have downloaded our source code from GitHub and currently in the root directory of the project folder.

We need to install three dependencies: Nginx, Docker, and Certbot. If you have installed them, you can skip to Section 4.

1 Install Nginx

Install Nginx on Cent OS 7.

sudo yum install epel-release # install epel-release basic package
sudo yum install nginx

Configure Nginx

sudo cp nginx/prod/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Change the field server_name to the domain name of the server for your Ngixn environment at this path: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

Start Nginx

sudo systemctl start nginx # start nginx
sudo systemctl status nginx # check nginx status

2 Install Docker

# Uninstall old versions
sudo yum remove docker \
                  docker-client \
                  docker-client-latest \
                  docker-common \
                  docker-latest \
                  docker-latest-logrotate \
                  docker-logrotate \
                  docker-engine
 
# Set up repository
sudo yum install -y yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager \
    --add-repo \
    https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo
 
# Install Docker Engine
sudo yum install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin
 
# Start Docker
sudo systemctl start docker

For more information, please refer to this official Docker documentations (opens in a new tab).

3 Install Certbot

Step 1: Install snap on CentOS 7

Snap is a new package management system for Linux. It allows you to install and run applications in a sandbox environment. We will use snap to install certbot. For more information, please refer to this Link (opens in a new tab).

sudo yum install epel-release # install epel-release basic package
sudo yum install snapd
sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket
sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap

Now logout and login again to make sure the snapd service is running.

Step 2: Install certbot

sudo snap install core; sudo snap refresh core # update snap
sudo snap install --classic certbot
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot

Step 3: Obtain a certificate

The following command automatically obtains a certificate and configures your web server to use it. It will also install a cron job to renew the certificate automatically.

sudo certbot --nginx

4 Build and Deploy the Application

Build the server

sudo sh scripts/build.sh

Start the server

sudo sh scripts/start.sh

Stop the server

sudo sh scripts/stop.sh

You should be able to access our service. Should any question occur at this point, please refer to the FAQ section below which includes many common troubleshooting guides.

FAQ

How to create the initial system admin account?

The initial seeding scripts for production is available under ./prisma/seed-prod.ts. The initial seeding scripts for development is available under ./prisma/seed.ts. You can modify the initial seeding scripts to create the initial system admin account.

Run either of the following commands to seed the database, You will need to first install npm packages before running the following commands:

npm run prisma:reset # for development, will drop current database and seed fake data
npm run prisma:seed-prod # for production
npx ts-node prisma/seed-prod.ts # alternative way to run the seeding script

How to setup the firewall for CentOS 7?

Please reference to this Blog Post (opens in a new tab).

How to config certificates issued by UCL TSG?

Copy the certificate file to ./nginx/certs folder

Copy the pre-configured nginx config file to /etc/nginx/nginx.conf using the following command:

sudo cp -rf nginx/prod/* /etc/nginx

Configure the certificate path in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Restart nginx service

sudo nginx -s reload

How to Check Docker Container Health Status?

sudo docker inspect --format "{{json .State.Health }}" ixn-traffic-light-system-live | jq

Replace ixn-traffic-light-system-live with the container name. jq is a JSON parser.

How to View Docker Container Logs?

sudo docker logs ixn-traffic-light-system-live

Replace ixn-traffic-light-system-live with the container name

Issues regarding to reading and writing files in ./sitedata folder?

Try giving the permission to the folder:

sudo chmod -R 777 ./sitedata

Restart certain service in the docker-compose file?

sudo nginx -s reload

Change local nginx server config?

sudo cp nginx/nginx-prod.conf /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Access nginx server log?

sudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.log # access log
sudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.log # error log