# Flight Manual for working on Virtual Machines As a member of the staff or the dev-team, you may have been given access to our cloud service providers like Azure, Digital Ocean, etc. Here are some handy commands that you can use to work on the Virtual Machines (VM), for instance performing maintenance updates or doing general houeskeeping. # Get a list of the VMs > [!NOTE] > While you may already have SSH access to the VMs, that alone will not let you list VMs unless you been granted access to the cloud portals as well. ## Azure Install Azure CLI `az`: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli > **(One-time) Install on macOS with [`homebrew`](https://brew.sh):** ``` brew install azure-cli ``` > **(One-time) Login:** ``` az login ``` > **Get the list of VM names and IP addresses:** ``` az vm list-ip-addresses --output table ``` ## Digital Ocean Install Digital Ocean CLI `doctl`: https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl#installing-doctl > **(One-time) Install on macOS with [`homebrew`](https://brew.sh):** ``` brew install doctl ``` > **(One-time) Login:** Authentication and context switching: https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl#authenticating-with-digitalocean ``` doctl auth init ``` > **Get the list of VM names and IP addresses:** ``` doctl compute droplet list --format "ID,Name,PublicIPv4" ``` # Keeping VMs Updated You should keep the VMs up to date by performing updates and upgrades. This will ensure that the virtual machine is patched with latest security fixes. > [!WARNING] > Before you run these commands: > > - Make sure that the VM has been provisioned completely and there is no post-install steps running. > - If you are updating packages on a VM that is already serving an application, make sure the app has been stopped / saved. Package updates will cause network bandwidth, memory and/or CPU usage spikes leading to outages on running applications. Update package information ```console sudo apt update ``` Upgrade installed packages ```console sudo apt upgrade -y ``` Cleanup unused packages ```console sudo apt autoremove -y ``` # Work on Web Servers (Proxy) We are running load balanced (Azure Load Balancer) instances for our web servers. These servers are running NGINX which reverse proxy all of the traffic to freeCodeCamp.org from various applications running on their own infrastructures. The NGINX config is available on [this repository](https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/nginx-config). ## First install ### 0. Prerequisites (workspace Setup) for Staff Get a login session on azure cli, and clone the `cloud-setup` (private repo) for setting up template workspace. ```console az login git clone cloud-setup cd cloud-setup ``` ### 1. Provision VMs on Azure. List all Resource Groups ```console az group list --output table ``` ```console Name Location Status --------------------------------- ------------- --------- tools-rg eastus Succeeded ``` Create a Resource Group ``` az group create --location eastus --name stg-rg-eastus ``` ```console az group list --output table ``` ```console Name Location Status --------------------------------- ------------- --------- tools-rg eastus Succeeded stg-rg-eastus eastus Succeeded ``` Next per the need, provision a single VM or a scaleset. #### A. provision single instances ```console az vm create \ --resource-group stg-rg-eastus \ --name \ --image UbuntuLTS \ --custom-data cloud-init/nginx-cloud-init.yaml \ --admin-username \ --ssh-key-values .pub ``` #### B. provision scaleset instance ```console az vmss create \ --resource-group stg-rg-eastus \ --name \ --image UbuntuLTS \ --upgrade-policy-mode automatic \ --custom-data cloud-init/nginx-cloud-init.yaml \ --admin-username \ --ssh-key-values .pub ``` > [!NOTE] > The custom-data config should allow you to configure and add SSH keys, install packages etc. via the cloud-init templates in your local workspace. Tweak the files in your local workspace as needed. The cloud-init config is optional and you can omit it completely to do setups manually as well. ### 2. (Optional) Install NGINX and configure from repository. The basic setup should be ready OOTB, via the cloud-init configuration. SSH and make changes as necessary for the particular instance(s). If you did not use the cloud-init config previously use the below for manual setup of NGINX and error pages: ```console sudo su cd /var/www/html git clone https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/error-pages cd /etc/ rm -rf nginx git clone https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/nginx-config nginx cd /etc/nginx ``` ### 3. Install Cloudflare origin certificates and upstream application config. Get the Cloudflare origin certificates from the secure storage and install at required locations. **OR** Move over existing certificates: ```console # Local scp -r username@source-server-public-ip:/etc/nginx/ssl ./ scp -pr ./ssl username@target-server-public-ip:/tmp/ # Remote rm -rf ./ssl mv /tmp/ssl ./ ```
Custom workflow with managed keys and hosts (Mrugesh) ```console # Local scp -r -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_fcc source-server-hostname:/etc/nginx/ssl ./ scp -pr -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_fcc ./ssl target-server-hostname:/tmp/ # Remote rm -rf ./ssl mv /tmp/ssl ./ ```
Update Upstream Configurations: ```console vi configs/upstreams.conf ``` Add/update the source/origin application IP addresses. ### 4. Setup networking and firewalls. Configure Azure firewalls and `ufw` as needed for ingress origin addresses. ### 5. Add the VM to the load balancer backend pool. Configure and add rules to load balancer if needed. You may also need to add the VMs to load balancer backend pool if needed. ## Logging and Monitoring 1. Check status for NGINX service using the below command: ```console sudo systemctl status nginx ``` 2. Logging and monitoring for the servers are available at: >

https://amplify.nginx.com

## Updating Instances (Maintenance) Config changes to our NGINX instances are maintained on GitHub, these should be deployed on each instance like so: 1. SSH into the instance and enter sudo ```console sudo su ``` 2. Get the latest config code. ```console cd /etc/nginx git fetch --all --prune git reset --hard origin/master ``` 3. Test and reload the config [with Signals](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/admin-guide/basic-functionality/runtime-control/#controlling-nginx). ```console nginx -t nginx -s reload ``` # Work on API Instances > **Todo: Add VM setup and installation details** 1. Install build tools for node binaries (`node-gyp`) etc. ```console sudo apt install build-essential ``` ## First Install Provisioning VMs with the Code 1. Install Node LTS. 2. Update `npm` and install PM2 and setup logrotate and startup on boot ```console npm i -g npm npm i -g pm2 pm2 install pm2-logrotate pm2 startup ``` 3. Clone freeCodeCamp, setup env and keys. ```console git clone https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/freeCodeCamp.git cd freeCodeCamp git checkout production-current # or any other branch to be deployed ``` 4. Create the `.env` from the secure credentials storage. 5. Create the `google-credentials.json` from the secure credentials storage. 6. Install dependencies ```console npm ci ``` 7. Build the server ```console npm run ensure-env && npm run build:server ``` 8. Start Instances ```console cd api-server pm2 start production-start.js -i max --max-memory-restart 600M --name org ``` ## Logging and Monitoring ```console pm2 logs ``` ```console pm2 monitor ``` ## Updating Instances (Maintenance) Code changes need to be deployed to the API instances from time to time. It can be a rolling update or a manual update. The later is essential when changing dependencies or adding enviroment variables. > [!DANGER] > The automated pipelines are not handling dependencies updates at the minute. We need to do a manual update before any deployment pipeline runs. ### 1. Manual Updates - Used for updating dependencies, env variables. 1. Stop all instances ```console pm2 stop all ``` 2. Install dependencies ```console npm ci ``` 3. Build the server ```console npm run ensure-env && npm run build:server ``` 4. Start Instances ```console pm2 start all --update-env && pm2 logs ``` ### 2. Rolling updates - Used for logical changes to code. ```console pm2 reload all --update-env && pm2 logs ``` > [!NOTE] > We are handling rolling updates to code, logic, via pipelines. You do not need to run these commands. These are here for documentation.