Conductor

Conductor is a CLI utility to automate the installation of Laravel application servers complete with some scripts and CLI commands to help deploy and manage multiple web applications on the server with ease.

Requirements

Conductor is developed, tested and supported on the Ubuntu Server LTS releases (22.04, 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, 14.04 and 12.04) and Debian 12 (Bookworm) in future I may support other distributions too, I as always welcome PR's from other members of the community too if they wish to contribute configuration changes/updates to the existing project source code!

Installation

Installation on Ubuntu or Debian-based servers can be done effortlessly by simply running this command from the console!

If installing on Debian, please ensure you install the sudo and curl packages BEFORE attempting to run the installer. You can do this by running apt install -y sudo curl.

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/allebb/conductor/stable/install.sh)"

If you would like to automate the deployments of your applications using Git and/or standalone webhooks, you should check out Hooker - Another tool that I've built ;)

If you wish to install on Ubuntu Server 16.04, 14.04 or 12.04 please use the instructions found on the PHP 5.6 branch instead: https://github.com/allebb/conductor/tree/ubuntu1404_php56

If installing on FreeBSD, a slightly different approach is required at present (given that it needs some initial packages installed and OpenSSL needs some attention). If you wish to install on FreeBSD please follow the FreeBSD Installation instructions.

If you wish to install Conductor from a specific branch, you can set the BRANCH_INSTALL environment variable before running the installer like so:

export BRANCH_INSTALL="ubuntu2204_php82" # Set the name of the Git Branch you want to install from.
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/allebb/conductor/ubuntu2204_php82/install.sh)" # Then, when we run the installer, it'll clone and install from the required branch!

Upgrading Conductor

Upgrade instructions can be found in the UPGRADE section.

What does this install

Out of the box this script will install and configure the following packages using aptitude:-

Nginx
PHP 8.2 (in addition to older versions including PHP 7.4, 8.0 and 8.1 - you can set your applications/sites to use this version if you need!)
Git Client
MariaDB
Redis
Supervisor
CertBot (LetsEncrypt)
~~Beanstalkd~~ (Removed as of v3.3.1 but can be installed manually if desired - not many people used this message queue!)

How to use it

It's pretty straight forward to use, I'll go over briefly the main features (CLI options) and what they do.

List of available commands and what they do

`conductor list`

A simple command that displays the names of the currently deployed applications on the server.

`conductor new {app name}`

When you first want to deploy a new instance of a Laravel application on to your server, you are required to SSH in (or you could write a web-based application to speak to the **conductor(( behind if you wanted too) to your server and then execute the following command:-

sudo conductor new {app name}

There are other application configurations you can use but by default Conductor will use the default Nginx virtualhost "template" (laravel) but this default can be changed in /etc/conductor.conf if, for example you only really setup and deploy Wordpress sites. You can however set the required template this when creating an application from the CLI by specifying the --template={template} option, the current templates that are available are:

wordpress - Wordpress "single site" configuration.
laravel - Laravel sites/applications.
proxy - A generic reverse proxy configuration (great for proxying traffic to backend applications such as a Docker container, a .NET Core, Python or Go application - the possibilities are endless ;))
html - A simple HTML configuration (great for static websites or when using Static site generator such as Gatsby, Jekyll or Sculpin).

As an example, if you wanted to use a generic proxy template for your application you should use the following command:

sudo conductor new {app name} --template=proxy

Then you can edit the configuration file (to set the correct backend proxy target port) by running conductor edit {app name}.

This command will prompt you for the 'FQDN' (or you can add multiple addresses of which the Virtualhost will serve requests for, these should be separated by spaces!). After entering the FQDN(s) for the new application you will then be asked for your application's environment type (this basically sets the APP_ENV environment variable for Nginx of which can then be used by your PHP application like so $_SERVER['APP_ENV']), if your application requires a MySQL database and as you would expect if you decide you do need a MySQL database Conductor will automatically create a database and MySQL user with permissions to only that database (to keep things secure!). The last part of the deployment you are asked how you would like to deploy your application, you have three options of which are as follows:-

Git - Keep things automated and use Git to clone and keep your application up to date, this is highly recommended as it's so simple to do... This is what Conductor does best ;-)
Restore from a backup - You can restore from an application back-up taken from either on your current server of if you're migrating from another server; when restoring from a backup Conductor will automatically extract the contents of the specified backup archive and will also automatically import any MySQL databases if found in the backup archive.
Manual - You are responsible to manually upload the files using SCP/FTP to the /var/conductor/applications/{app name}/ directory or manually clone your into this directory using a VCS client (such as git or hg).

The templates are just that, a template! Once your application has provisioned on the server you can then run conductor edit {appname} which will open up your virtual host configuration template and you can tweak it as you need.

That it, once you have passed through all the prompts your application will then be live and accessible!

`conductor destroy {app name}`

Will remove the application from the server, removes the Nginx configuration for this application and will also drop the MySQL database and MySQL user (if present), this command basically removes the named application and immediately stops serving the content.

`conductor update {app name}`

The upgrade command does three things, firstly it gives you the option of putting your application into 'offline mode' of which is up to you (you're prompted for your decision here), before it upgrades anything an automatic 'snapshot' is taken and stored separately to enable you to 'roll-back' later if required.. So next if Conductor finds that the application was previously deployed by Git or has a .git directory it will attempt to do a git fetch --all and then a git reset --hard origin/master to pull in the latest changes. If no git directory is found, Conductor assumes you're doing a 'manual upgrade' and prompts you at this point to upload the new files into your application's root directory... once this is complete you should confirm that the files have all been uploaded... Next Conductor will now execute any database migrations and then clear the application cache as well as dump the autoloader and finally (if you choose to 'take the application offline' during the upgrade process) it will now be automatically put back on-line!

`conductor rollback {app name}`

This is basically the opposite of conductor upgrade {app name}, this uses that last snapshot that was automatically taken the last time that you preformed an conductor upgrade {app name} on your application.

You will be prompted to confirm that you wish to revert to the last database snapshot, it is recommended in most situations that you do this, if however you choose 'no' you will be given the option to run Laravel's migrate:rollback function instead!

`conductor backup {app name}`

This command provides an extremely easy way to backup both your application files, dependencies, access and error logs including your MySQL database (if you're using one for your application) have them compressed, timestamped and then stored under /var/conductor/backups for you to either 'restore' from in future or to manually SSH/FTP them to a remote machine or even set-up an automated process to Rsync them out to a remote backup server etc... the choices are endless!

If you wish to automate backups of ALL applications on the server please check out the 'Automated backups' section below.

`conductor restore {app name}`

Yep, you got it... it's the reverse of conductor backup {app name} but just to be clear, this command will prompt for a backup file to be used before then deleting the contents of your application's hosting and logs directory and then restoring the application files and logs from the archive and will lastly drop and restore your MySQL database too (again, if your application uses one!)

`conductor start {app name}`

This command enables you to start serving your Laravel 4.x application, this invokes the 'php artistan start' command. You only need to run this if you've recently 'stopped' your application as all newly provisioned applications will be in the 'started' state by default.

`conductor stop {app name}`

This command enables you to stop serving your Laravel 4.x application, this invokes the 'php artistan stop' command.

`conductor services start`

A very simple and quick method to start ALL dependent/bundled Conductor managed daemons in the recommended order.

`conductor services stop`

A very simple and quick method to stop ALL dependent/bundled Conductor managed daemons in the recommended order.

`conductor services status`

A very simple and quick method to display the current status of ALL dependent/bundled Conductor managed daemons.

`conductor services restart`

A very simple and quick method to restart ALL dependent/bundled Conductor managed daemons in the recommended order.

`conductor services reload`

When manually changing configuration of one or more of the dependent/bundled daemons this command will attempt to safely 'reload' the configuration of the daemons without the need to disconnect existing sessions. - Please not this is NOT required when using the conductor command to manage configuration files but is recommended if you make manual changes!

`conductor --version`

Displays the current version of the Conductor application that you are currently running on your server, this should help determine whether you are running the latest version by comparing with our latest release's page on our website.

CLI options for non-interactive operation

In the default "interactive" mode, Conductor prompts for various options and questions, if however you wish to script this for unattended (non-interactive mode) etc. since v3, you can now use the CLI Options document document to see the available CLI options.

Generating and updating LetsEncrypt Certificates

You can generate and update LetsEncrypt certificates by running the following command:

sudo conductor letsencrypt {appname}

Once you have generated the SSL certificate you will need to edit and comment out/uncomment the required configuration for the required Nginx virtual host file. Run the command conductor edit {appname} to edit the configuration file.

Your SSL certificates will automatically be renewed as required.

If you want to remove an SSL certificate from your server you should use sudo conductor letsencrypt {appname} --delete.

If you wish to force a renewal of the SSL certificate you can use sudo conductor letsencrypt {appname} --force-renew.

Automating application backups

An automation script specifically designed to be used with CRON jobs etc. can be found in the utils/ directory, this shell script will automatically backup all applications on the server and will also remove older backups (as configured in the script), the default backup retention is 7 days!

To configure this task, place the utils/scheduled_backups.sh script in a directory of your choice on the server (or used directly from the default installation path!) and then set-up a CRON task as follows:-

0 0 * * * /etc/conductor/utils/scheduled_backups.sh

The above example will execute the task daily at midnight, the default configuration will ensure that backups older than 7 days are also deleted (to ensure that your disks don't fill up!) this setting is configurable by editing the DAYS constant inside the script.

You may wish to then have a remote server 'pull' and 'archive' these backups of which will be located in /var/conductor/backups/.

Automating composer updates

As conductor is designed to be a 'set and forget' system, we've now implemented an script that you can add as a CRON job (to get rid of those nasty '30 days out of date' errors), by adding this script to the CRONtab you can be sure that Composer is automatically updated on the first day of every month at 03:00.

0 3 1 * * /etc/conductor/utils/update_composer.sh

The use of different PHP versions (8.1, 8.0 and 7.4)

By default, Conductor installs PHP 8.1, PHP 8.0 and PHP 7.4 onto your server and will configure new applications/sites to use PHP 8.1 out of the box.

If however you need to set a specific application or site to use PHP 8.0 or PHP 7.4 you can edit the virtual host configuration in /etc/conductor/configs/{sitename}.conf and change the socket that PHP-FPM is running on, for example you should change:

fastcgi_pass                    unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;

to...

fastcgi_pass                    unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;

alternatively, if you want to use PHP 8.0 you can ofcourse use:

fastcgi_pass                    unix:/var/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;

You should then reload nginx by running sudo service nginx reload or by using the sudo conductor services reload command.

If you have configured the Laravel Scheduler or any other framework specific cron jobs, you should update your CRON job lines too, for example:

* * * * * cd /var/conductor/application/{appname} && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Should be changed to...

* * * * * cd /var/conductor/application/{appname} && php7.4 artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

**Notice the replacement of the php binary with the php7.4 specific binary! If you fail to do this, your scheduled tasks will run using default PHP 8.1 runtime!

If you want your server to use PHP 7.4 by default, you can update the default socket path that will be used when provisioning new virtual host configuration, to do this you should edit the main Conductor configuration settings file here: /etc/conductor.conf, change this line:

        "fpmsocket": "/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock",