Ghost Install Script

Table of Contents

Experimental, with Docker
Running on LXD
Running a MySQL Server
Installing Ghost
Setting Up Reverse Proxy Manually

Experimental, With Docker

!! Note !! Experimental and does not work really well.

# Build
docker build --tag ghost .

# Run
docker run --rm \
  --mount type=bind,source="$(pwd)",target=/www \
  ghost ghost install local --dir /www

This whole thing does not quite work the way I wanted it to be, but I discovered a few interesting things along the way. In particular, some nice tricks regarding Docker.

Instead of using Dockerfile exclusively to install and configure packages, I delegated the installation directives to a dedicated bash install script, see install_script.sh. The script is modular, each distinct step is encapsulated within a function, so a user can include or exclude a part of the installation process easily. Another benefit is that I would reduce the number of layers, and potentially reducing the final size of the container image.

Part of playing around with gosu (because ghost CLI does not work well with root user), I used a bash script entrypoint.sh as the PID 1.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -e

if [[ "$1" = "ghost" ]]; then
  exec gosu node "$@"
fi

exec "$@"

This is a neat trick; if bash argument $1 is ghost, it will run gosu node, de-escalating the privilege down to user node instead of running it as root. This translates into running the container with docker run <container-name> ghost to invoke ghost CLI. The added benefit is that it makes the container image flexible, where docker run -it <container-name> /bin/bash still gives a user access to bash shell inside of the container.

Running on LXD

The install_script.sh is intended to run on a freshly-spun VPS. For testing, it runs well on LXD (Ubuntu focal) as well. Simply copy the whole script, run cat > install.sh, paste the content of the script into the terminal, and hit ctrl + d, then run bash install.sh to start the installation process. After that, create a new empty folder, assign the right permission, cd into it, then run the installation by issuing ghost install.

Running a MySQL server

A MySQL server is run within the lxc container for simplicity.

Taken from Ghost official installation guide.

# To set a password, run
sudo mysql

# Now update your user with this command
# Replace 'password' with your password, but keep the quote marks!
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';

# Then exit MySQL
quit

Change password with something else.

Installing Ghost

su node && cd && mkdir ghost_site && cd ghost_site
ghost install

Setting Up Reverse Proxy Manually

!! Note !! This is the minimal reverse-proxy configuration.

During the ghost installation, keep the default localhost:2368 url as this would automatically skip the nginx with SSL setup. I prefer to set up my own reverse-proxy.

server {
  listen 8080;
  location / {
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;
  }

  client_max_body_size 50m;
}

Change the listen port; 8080 here is for testing.

Place this file at /etc/nginx/sites-available/ghost.conf, then run sudo ln -s to place it inside /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ghost.conf. Remember to expose the port on the lxc container and run the nginx on the host (not on the container).