send/docs/AWS.md

Deployment to AWS

This document describes how to do a deployment of Send in AWS

AWS requirements

Security groups (2)

• ALB:

  • inbound: allow traffic from anywhere on port 80 and 443
  • ountbound: allow traffic to the instance security group on port 8080

• Instance:

  • inbound: allow SSH from your public IP or a bastion (changing the default SSH port is a good idea)
  • inbound: allow traffic from the ALB security group on port 8080
  • ountbound: allow all traffic to anywhere

Resources

• An S3 bucket (block all public access)

• A private EC2 instance running Ubuntu 20.04 (you can use the Amazon EC2 AMI Locator to find the latest)

  Attach an IAM role to the instance with the following inline policy:

  {
      "Version": "2012-10-17",
      "Statement": [
          {
              "Action": [
                  "s3:ListAllMyBuckets"
              ],
              "Resource": [
                  "*"
              ],
              "Effect": "Allow"
          },
          {
              "Action": [
                  "s3:ListBucket",
                  "s3:GetBucketLocation",
                  "s3:ListBucketMultipartUploads"
              ],
              "Resource": [
                  "arn:aws:s3:::<s3_bucket_name>"
              ],
              "Effect": "Allow"
          },
          {
              "Action": [
                  "s3:GetObject",
                  "s3:GetObjectVersion",
                  "s3:ListMultipartUploadParts",
                  "s3:PutObject",
                  "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
                  "s3:DeleteObject",
                  "s3:DeleteObjectVersion"
              ],
              "Resource": [
                  "arn:aws:s3:::<s3_bucket_name>/*"
              ],
              "Effect": "Allow"
          }
      ]
  }
  

• A public ALB:

  • Create a target group with the instance registered (HTTP on port 8080 and path /)
  • Configure HTTP (port 80) to redirect to HTTPS (port 443)
  • HTTPS (port 443) using the latest security policy and an ACM certificate like send.mydomain.com

• A Route53 public record, alias from send.mydomain.com to the ALB

Software requirements

• Git
• NodeJS 15.x LTS
• Local Redis server

Prerequisite packages

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common

Add repositories

• NodeJS 15.x LTS (checkout package.json):

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb [arch=amd64] https://deb.nodesource.com/node_15.x focal main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodejs.list

• Git (latest)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa

• Redis (latest)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:redislabs/redis

Install required packages

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git nodejs redis-server telnet

Redis server

Password (optional)

Generate a strong password:

makepasswd --chars=100

Edit Redis configuration file /etc/redis/redis.conf:

requirepass <redis_password>

Note: documentation on securing Redis https://redis.io/topics/security

Systemd

Enable and (re)start the Redis server service:

sudo systemctl enable redis-server
sudo systemctl restart redis-server
sudo systemctl status redis-server

Website directory

Setup a directory for the data

sudo mkdir -pv /var/www/send
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/send
sudo 750 /var/www/send

NodeJS

Update npm:

sudo npm install -g npm

Checkout current NodeJS and npm versions:

node --version
npm --version

Clone repository, install JavaScript packages and compiles the assets:

sudo su -l www-data -s /bin/bash
cd /var/www/send
git clone https://gitlab.com/timvisee/send.git .
npm install
npm run build
exit

Create the file /var/www/send/.env used by Systemd with your environment variables (checkout config.js for more configuration environment variables):

BASE_URL='https://send.mydomain.com'
NODE_ENV='production'
PORT='8080'
REDIS_PASSWORD='<redis_password>'
S3_BUCKET='<s3_bucket_name>'

Lower files and folders permissions to user and group www-data:

sudo find /var/www/send -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/send -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;
sudo find -L /var/www/send/node_modules/.bin/ -exec chmod 750 {} \;

Systemd

Create the file /etc/systemd/system/send.service with root user and 644 mode:

[Unit]
Description=Send
After=network.target
Requires=redis-server.service
Documentation=https://gitlab.com/timvisee/send

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/npm run prod
EnvironmentFile=/var/www/send/.env
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/send
User=www-data
Group=www-data
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note: could be better tuner to secure the service by restricting system permissions, check with systemd-analyze security send

Enable and start the Send service, check logs:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable send
sudo systemctl start send
sudo systemctl status send
journalctl -fu send