Deployment/New Node Checklist

• Aptitude
  • apt get update
  • aptitude build scripts

• Sysadmin stuff
  • Make non-root default user

• SSH
  • No root login

• Docker

Domain Records

If you want example.com to point to your new server, log into your host provider and set up the following DNS records.

Set up an A Name record with host @ (this is the A Name equivalent of a wild card) and set its target to the IP address of your server.

Next set up a C Name record with host www (this rule will catch all www.domain.com) and set its target to domain.com. (trailing period is important).

Now, any requests to www.domain.com will be sent to domain.com instead, and any requests to domain.com will go to the IP address of your machine.

Aptitude

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Fresh dev machine apt script

Runs apt-get for all the dev things you need. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Run as root
# 
# Use the -s flag to simulate this command before actually running it,
# as libraries tend to shift around a lot between Ubuntu versions.

echo "export EDITOR=\"vim\"" >> ~/.bash_profile

# Stupid ubuntu packages
# http://askubuntu.com/questions/593433/error-sudo-add-apt-repository-command-not-found#639431
apt-get install software-properties-common

apt-get install -y \
	vim \
	aptitude \
	build-essential \
	checkinstall \
	make \
	m4 \
	bison \
	flex \
	tar \
	perl \
	binutils \
	sed \
	gawk \
	\
	git \
	wget \
	curl \
	docker \
	\
	python2.7 \
	python3 python3-pip \
	\
	libreadline-gplv2-dev  \
	libncursesw5-dev \
	libssl-dev

Dotfiles

Wait until you create a user to install any dotfiles, of course. Root remains plain and uncontaminated.

Unix dotfiles - yargwid repo https://github.com/charlesreid1/yargwid

Mirror: http://git.charlesreid1.com/charlesreid1/yargwid

Users

See Unix/Sysadmin

Add a non-root user

#!/bin/sh

export USERNAME="zappa"

echo "Making user ${USERNAME}"
useradd ${USERNAME}

echo "Setting home directory /home/${USERNAME}"
mkdir -p /home/${USERNAME}
chown ${USERNAME}:${USERNAME} /home/${USERNAME}
usermod -d /home/${USERNAME} ${USERNAME}

echo "Setting ${USERNAME} shell to bash"
usermod -s /bin/bash ${USERNAME}

echo "If you want to add ${USERNAME} to sudo group, run the command yourself:"
echo ""
echo "    usermod -G sudo ${USERNAME}"
echo ""

echo "Set password for ${USERNAME}:"
passwd ${USERNAME}

Once user is in sudo group, no need to add them to sudoers file.

SSH

SSHD Config

Set up sshd config file:

$ sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Specifically, here are the keys to change:

PermitRootLogin no

then restart the sshd service:

$ sudo service sshd restart

SSL

This covers how you get an SSL certificate to run encrypted services on a server.

Lets Encrypt

Getting a certificate for the domain associated with the new node:

• Visit Let's Encrypt website https://letsencrypt.org/
• If command line access, redirected to CertBot https://certbot.eff.org/
• Run commands to install certbot command line utility

Installing Certbot

CertBot directs me to run the following as sudo:

#!/bin/sh

add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
apt-get update
apt-get -y install certbot 

Obtaining a cert from the "webroot" plugin (of certbot) requires access to the root web directory.

That means, we actually have to have a web server set up. Oh, ok, hang on.

Side note: installing Apache to test certificates

Really quick, let's install an apache web server so we can turn on SSL with it and test out our certificates.

sudo apt-get install apache2

This installs apache2 to the default location. We can now put a quick "hello world" html file into the web root, which is by default at /var/www/html. (If we don't know where it is, we can check the default apache config file which is in /etc/apache2/, and that will specify the web root location.)

Create a hello world page:

$ echo "<h2>OHAI WERLD</h2>" > /var/www/html/index.html

May need to be sudo, since by default my /var/www/ was owned by root.

Now start the apache service:

$ sudo service apache2 restart

Now you can visit your new machine's IP address in the web browser and see "OHAI WERLD".

Note that if you set up any A Name records for a domain to forward to your server, you can also check those now.

This Apache server does not have SSL set up yet, we'll do that once we generate the SSL certificates.

Note: check who the Apache user is by opening /etc/apache2/envvars and check the variable export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data.

This is the user who should own our web directory /var/www/htdocs:

$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

Certbot to generate certificates

Now we use Certbot to generate SSL certificates.

Use the cert only framework to generate a web root certificate (the kind you generate if you control the web root directory).

No Arguments:

$ certbot certonly

This asks for some information, like an email and whether you agree with the Lets Encrypt EULA: https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.1.1-August-1-2016.pdf

This makes several references to ISRG, which is the Internet Security Research Group, a non-profit based in California that served as the certificate authority willing to sign Lets Encrypt certificates without charging absurd amounts of money: https://letsencrypt.org/isrg/

This asks for your domain names, be sure and enter both example.com and www.example.com.

Well... then the stinker couldn't interpret my web directory input.

With Arguments:

I had more luck with clearly stated error messages when I ran certbot with the various flags to automatically answer the questions above.

$ sudo certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/www/html -d reidmachine.party -d wwwreidmachine.party
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
Starting new HTTPS connection (1): acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org
Obtaining a new certificate
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for reidmachine.party
http-01 challenge for wwwreidmachine.party
Using the webroot path /var/www/html for all unmatched domains.
Waiting for verification...
Cleaning up challenges
Failed authorization procedure. wwwreidmachine.party (http-01): urn:acme:error:connection :: The server could not connect to the client to verify the domain :: DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up A for wwwreidmachine.party, reidmachine.party (http-01): urn:acme:error:unknownHost :: The server could not resolve a domain name :: No valid IP addresses found for reidmachine.party

IMPORTANT NOTES:
 - The following errors were reported by the server:

   Domain: reidmachine.party
   Type:   unknownHost
   Detail: No valid IP addresses found for reidmachine.party

   To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain name was
   entered correctly and the DNS A record(s) for that domain
   contain(s) the right IP address.
 - The following errors were reported by the server:

   Domain: wwwreidmachine.party
   Type:   connection
   Detail: DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up A for wwwreidmachine.party

   To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain name was
   entered correctly and the DNS A record(s) for that domain
   contain(s) the right IP address. Additionally, please check that
   your computer has a publicly routable IP address and that no
   firewalls are preventing the server from communicating with the
   client. If you're using the webroot plugin, you should also verify
   that you are serving files from the webroot path you provided.

Now certbot will use access to the web directory /var/www/htdocs

Certbot will use this access to get certificates and put them in the right place. (Where?)

To obtain a cert using the "webroot" plugin, which can work with the webroot directory of any webserver software:

$ certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/www/example -d example.com -d www.example.com -w /var/www/thing -d thing.is -d m.thing.is

$ certbot certonly --webroot -w /var/www/example -d example.com -d www.example.com -w /var/www/thing -d thing.is -d m.thing.is

This command will obtain a single cert for example.com, www.example.com, thing.is, and m.thing.is; it will place files below /var/www/example to prove control of the first two domains, and under /var/www/thing for the second pair.

Docker

Installing

See Docker/Installing

$ apt-get install docker