union server

nodejs server for my personal projects. supports multiple domains via expressjs vhosts, HTTPS for them via vhttps, uploads via multer and more.

notes

symlinks

a symlinks/ directory is git ignored. it contains all the symlinks to specific paths on the machine running union-server. it's just a convenient way to run the server on multiple machines (like when developing) without having to deal with dotfiles or hardcoding anything.

here are the required files that must be in ./symlinks for the server to work:

symlinks/
├── .creds
│   ├── .union-admin-name
│   └── .union-admin-pass
├── blog.union.io
├── blog.union.io-ssl
│   ├── fullchain.pem
│   └── privkey.pem
├── fonts.union.io
├── fonts.union.io-ssl
│   ├── fullchain.pem
│   └── privkey.pem
├── localhost-ssl
│   ├── localhost.crt
│   └── localhost.decrypted.key
├── union.io
├── union.io-ssl
│   ├── fullchain.pem
│   └── privkey.pem
└── uploads

domains

each domain should have a ${domain}.js file in ./servers that defines how it works, a symlink in ./symlinks for the web root, and its SSL defined if necessary in index.js.

deploying & starting

deploys are done manually from a local machine by running the ./scripts/sync.sh script to copy over all the relevant files, then by running ./scripts/issue-deploy-command.sh which will trigger an npm install on the deploy server. installs auto-trigger a stop + restart of the server, which is a forever process that boils down to node index.js plus a watcher to restart it.

permissions and other odds & ends

SSL certs live in /etc/letsencrypt/live, and had to have their permissions relaxed since the certs are acquired via a letsencrypt bot that runs as root. the certificates should auto-renew.

by default non-root users can't open port 80 or 443. to allow any user to open any port: