hiveship / quick-setup-debian-server

Quick Ansible setup of a Debian server. Deployment of several useful & Dockerized services.

Quick Setup Debian Server

Ansible setup to configure a blank Debian 8 server automatically with only one command.

Quick Start

1. Customise variables in ./group_vars/all/vars_file.txt and change extention of the file from .txt to .yml.
2. Run make init for first run of the script (on a blank server) or make update to update an already secured server.

Included in this Setup

• Securisation of the server:
  • Create a new user with its own password,
  • Disable root & password authentification (use of SSH keys),
  • Install and configure security services, including:
    • Fail2ban
    • Rkhunter
  • Change SSH default port.
• Installation of Newrelic agent to monitor the server.
• Installation of basic stuff for various uses:
  • htop,
  • Python,
  • ...
• Installation of Docker. This will be the only thing running in the server considered, all services will be dockerized.
• Installation of various Docker services:
  • reverse-proxy: install & configure a reverse proxy to route all the http requests to the good dockerized service. Based on jwilder/nginx-proxy docker scripts. See: https://github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy
  • srv-voeux: install & configure a php website used in my portfolio. You probably won't need that... ;)
  • seedbox: install & configure several seedbox. Based on kfei/docktorrent docker scripts. See: https://github.com/kfei/docktorrent
  • files: install & configure several https web interface to retrieve the files downloaded by the seedbox. Based on smdion/docker-h5ai docker scripts. See: https://hub.docker.com/r/smdion/docker-h5ai/.
  • jenkins: install & configure Jenkins.
  • gogs: install & configure a git repo for this server. Use of gogs, see: https://github.com/gogits/gogs
  • cadvisor: install & configure cAdvisor to monitor all the services created. Use of cAdvisor, see: https://github.com/google/cadvisor.
  • owncloud: install & configure an ownCloud server.

How to Run the Scripts

1. Identify which services you need. The file main.yml is used to tell Ansible which roles to play. Simply comment/uncomment the ones you don't need. :)
2. Customise variables. Under ./group_vars/all/, there is a file named vars_file.txt:

• Change all the variables you need inside of this file,
• Change the extension of the file from .txt to .yml.

3. Create template files (SSL certs, htpasswd files, ...) needed to configure the different services (see next section for more explanations about the templates and files needed)
4. Run the command make (init|update) (init for blank server, update for already secured server); type the password you have configured in ./group_vars/all/vars_file.txt
5. Grab a coffee, chill out... Because everything is done now - you only have to wait for the end of the execution. :)

Note: if for some reason, the deployment fails after the securisation of the server, you should comment the - securisation role. If you forget to do so, you will have an error (server unreachable) because root auth is disabled & SSH port is changed after the securisation!

Specific Configurations

Main Configuration File

Unix Encrypted Password

To generate the encrypted password of your user:

mkpasswd --method=sha-512

If this utility is not installed on your system then you can still easily generate these passwords using Python. See: http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/faq.html#how-do-i-generate-crypted-passwords-for-the-user-module

Seedbox

It is possible to run multiple seedbox on the same server. If you want to do so, a rtorrent will be used as a master and this master can have several slaves.

That is why there is two Ansible variable dictionaries: one for seedbox_master and one for seedbox_slave.

• ports are the ports you need to expose to make the service run
• name[s] are the names of the docker containers.

Further information concerning the customisation of the seedboxes can be found at the following address, see: https://github.com/kfei/docktorrent

Hostnames

If you are using a reverse proxy, it is certainly because you have some-url.pointing-to-your-server.co ; in this section, you can customise the URL of each of the services.

Reverse-proxy

"tasks/my_specialconfs_pub.yml"

Configure certs, special configurations and htpassword for desired services. For more details, see:

• SSL: https://github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy#ssl-support
• HTTP Auth: https://github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy#basic-authentication-support
• Special configuration for one service: https://github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy#per-virtual_host

"templates/"

This folder contains everything needed in previous step, such as:

• Certs,
• htpasswd files,
• Special configuration files...

Seedbox

"tasks/my_specialconfs_pub.yml"

Copy htpasswd files for seedboxes.

"templates/"

This folder contains the htpasswd files needed in previous step.

Improvements & TODOs

• Bugs:
  • mariadb for owncloud on some servers,
  • python-pip installation fails sometime.
• Refactor code (in particular variables structure) to have a better code quality,
• Improve workaround for having multiple seedboxes on the same host: using screens is not a brilliant solution, and I am really interested in something prettier (maybe customizing the Dockerfile of rtorrent?),
• Write tests.

If you find bugs & improvements, feel free to submit an issue, fork this project and send pull requests! :)