Initial Ubuntu 16.04 Web Server Setup

Ansible playbook to setup web server and playbook to deploy laravel project with zero time.

What initial-setup.yml playbook does

• install python2 and aptitude
• upgrade all software
• create user with sudo rights
• configure sshd: disables root login and password authentication, also allows to login only user created on previous step

What setup.yml playbook does

• install
  • git
  • ntp
  • vim
  • tmux
  • htop
  • curl
  • unzip
• configure automatic security updates (do not reloads server, only installs updates)
• setup timezone
• configure iptables and fail2ban
• create swap file
• setup ssl certificate with letsencrypt
• install node.js, npm and yarn
• install nginx
• install php and composer
• install mysql
• creates following folders structure for zero time deployment:
  • /path/to/domain
    • current -> /link/to/latest/release
    • persistent
      • storage
    • releases
      • 2017-08-10-10-00-00
      • 2017-08-11-10-00-00
      • 2017-08-12-10-00-00

What deploy.yml playbook does

• clone repository
• set correct permissions
• link /path/to/release/storage to /path/to/domain/persistent/storage
• install composer dependencies
• link /path/to/release/.env to /path/to/domain/persistent/.env
• install npm dependencies and generate assets
• optimize laravel application
• backup database
• run new migrations
• link /path/to/domain/current to /path/to/domain/releases/new-release
• delete all, but 10 latest releases

If build fails

• rollback migrations
• remove new release folder
• link /path/to/domain/current to /path/to/domain/releases/last-success-release

Install

Inventory file

Create inventory file in project root. You should specify ip address of your server in this file.

[web]
46.101.210.137

Install dependencies

ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml

Environment variables

Copy vars/main.yml.example to vars/main.yml and change variable values for your needs. For security reasons you may want to encrypt this file using ansible-vault:

ansible-vault encrypt vars/main.yml

And then edit this file with

ansible-vault edit vars/main.yml

To see all available variables take a look at roles/*/defaults/main.yml. Also visit external roles github page for additional documentation.

To generate password for your user use

sudo apt-get install -y whois
mkpasswd --method=SHA-512

Nginx and php-fpm configs

• Site config for nginx place in roles/nginx/templates/yoursite.j2
• Php-fpm pool config place in roles/php/templates/yoursite.conf.j2
• Default configs are available in this gist

Initial setup

By default on ubuntu 16.04 there is no python 2 and aptitude. Without those programs ansible cannot work. To fix it run:

ansible-playbook initial-setup.yml

Beside it this playbook also creates user and configures ssh server.

Provision server

This playbook setup nginx, php-fpm, mysql, nodejs, etc.

ansible-playbook setup.yml

To run only specific roles

ansible-playbook setup.yml --tags=user,nginx

To exclude specific roles

ansible-playbook setup.yml --skip-tags=user,nginx

Deploy

ansible-playbook deploy.yml

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please email [email protected] instead of using the issue tracker.

Credits

• Alexander Melihov
• All contributors