Self-hosting - Bare metal install instructions

[CodeShakingSheep]

Hi, first of all thanks for this project. It looks promising and I'm curious to try it out. What's keeping me from installing it is that I strictly don't use Docker on my server. So, my question is, is it possible to do a bare metal installation? If yes, how? Would be awesome to have instructions about that added to the docs. Thank you 🙏

[wmnnd]

You can follow the build steps in the Dockerfile and run Keila like that, it’s pretty straightforward :-)

[wmnnd]

You just need Elixir installed, then follow the steps here, skipping the Docker-specific parts like using two separate images for building and executing: https://github.com/pentacent/keila/blob/main/ops/Dockerfile

[CodeShakingSheep]

Hm ok. So, just to be clear, I would do the following:

• Download .tar.gz or .zip file from latest GitHub release and unpack it
• Install Elixir with sudo apt install erlang-dev elixir given a Debian server
• Build using the mix commands from the Dockerfile and npm ci --prefix ./assets
• Adding a user for the app
• Chowning the installation directory
• Exposing port 4000

Did I miss anything? Also, in docker-compose.yaml there are some ENV vars defined, such as DB_URL etc. Where do I specify these in a bare metal installation? Thank you.

[wmnnd]

You don’t necessarily have to add the user, that’s just a Docker best practice. Though I would not recommend running Keila as root on your server. It’s also not necessary to expose port 4000, you probably want to use a reverse proxy like nginx to terminate HTTPS and expose Keila on port 443.

The configuration environment variables have to be defined in such a way that the app can see them when it boots up.

[CodeShakingSheep]

Always adding a dedicated app user. Yes, you're right, that's what I meant. I'm running nginx on my server for reverse proxying. As for the ENV vars, would it be possible to use a .env file in Keila's installation directory to read the vars from (that's how I know it from other self-hosted apps)? Because I'd prefer the ENV vars to be app-wide, not system-wide. How can this be achieved?

[wmnnd]

The env vars don't need to be system-wide, they just need to be present in the environment from which you launch Keila. This could be a custom launch script or a systemd service, etc.

[CodeShakingSheep]

Alright, thank you for the hints. Will go down the road with a systemd service. That should work. Will tinker with it on the weekend and report back.

[wmnnd]

Okay, keep us posted! I’ll close this issue as resolved but please feel free to comment an update here :blush: