SERVER.md

This is mostly basic linux server configuration stuff but I felt it important to document and share the steps I took to get sinopia running permanently on my server. You will need root (or sudo) permissions for the following.

Running as a separate user

First create the sinopia user:

$ sudo adduser --disabled-login --gecos 'Sinopia NPM mirror' sinopia

You create a shell as the sinopia user using the following command:

$ sudo su sinopia
$ cd ~

The 'cd ~' command send you to the home directory of the sinopia user. Make sure you run sinopia at least once to generate the config file. Edit it according to your needs.

Listening on all addresses

If you want to listen to every external address set the listen directive in the config to:

# you can specify listen address (or simply a port)
listen: 0.0.0.0:4873

Keeping sinopia running forever

We can use the node package called 'forever' to keep sinopia running all the time. https://github.com/nodejitsu/forever

First install forever globally:

$ sudo npm install -g forever

Make sure you've started sinopia at least once to generate the config file and write down the created admin user. You can then use the following command to start sinopia:

$ forever start `which sinopia`

You can check the documentation for more information on how to use forever.

Surviving server restarts

We can use crontab and forever together to restart sinopia after a server reboot. When you're logged in as the sinopia user do the following:

$ crontab -e

This might ask you to choose an editor. Pick your favorite and proceed. Add the following entry to the file:

@reboot /usr/bin/forever start /usr/lib/node_modules/sinopia/bin/sinopia

The locations may vary depending on your server setup. If you want to know where your files are you can use the 'which' command:

$ which forever
$ which sinopia