deploying_laravel_project_guide_Ubuntu_20.04.md

Step by step guide on deploying a Laravel app on Ubuntu 20.04 server with Digital Ocean.

Video on Youtube

Link to the Gist

Link to the live demo

Getting Started

• Create droplet with Ubuntu 20.04
• Make sure your DigitalOcean ssh key is authenticated on your system first
• eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
• ssh-add .ssh/[DigitalOcean SSH Key]
• ssh root@your_ip_address_or_domain_name
• Create a new user
• adduser [new user name]
• Enter password and other information
• usermod -aG sudo [new user name]
• Sync root permissions with new user
• rsync --archive --chown=[new user name]:[new user name] ~/.ssh /home/[new user name]
• Try logging in on different terminal to make sure it works before you close out the root
• ssh [new user name]@your_ip_address_or_domain_name
• Create and add SSH keys for GitHub
• ssh-keygen -a 100 -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/[name_of_your_key -C "[youremail.com]"

Disable Password from Server

• Edit the ssh config file
• sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
• Find PermitRootLogin and set that to no
• Turn off
• PasswordAuthentication no
• Reload to make sure changes take effect
• sudo systemctl reload sshd

Setting Up Firewall

• View all available firewall settings
• sudo ufw app list
• Allow on OpenSSH so we don't get locked out
• sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
• Enable Firewall
• sudo ufw enable
• Check the status
• sudo ufw status

Install Linux, Nginx, MySQL, PHP

Nginx

• Update and upgrade ubuntu packages
• sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade
• Install Nginx
• sudo apt install nginx
• View all available apps
• sudo ufw app list
• Add Nginx
• sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'
• Verify change
• sudo ufw status
• Test server
• http://[server_domain_or_IP_address]
• Create read write access along with www-data
• List users with groups
• ps aux|grep nginx
• Give current user www-data permissions
• sudo usermod -aG www-data $USER

MySQL (Process is slightly different from previous versions of Ubuntu)

• Install Mysql
• sudo apt install mysql-server
• Ensure that the server is running
• sudo systemctl start mysql.service
• Open up the MySQL prompt
• sudo mysql
• To verify root user's auth method
• SELECT user, authentication_string, plugin, host FROM mysql.user;
• Change the root user’s authentication method to one that uses a password
• ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';
• exit
• To enter MySQL CLI
• mysql -u root -p
• exit
• To run automated securing script
• sudo mysql_secure_installation
• Enter root password
• Press Y for VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin
• Set strictness level
• Set root password
• Remove anonymous users? Y
• Disallow root login remotely? Y
• Remove test database and access to it? Y
• Reload privilege tables now? Y
• To enter MySQL CLI
• mysql -u root -p
• Enter root password
• To verify root user's auth method
• SELECT user, authentication_string, plugin, host FROM mysql.user;
• exit
• We'll come back to this later

PHP & Basic Nginx Setup

• To add software repo
• sudo apt install software-properties-common
• To install the basic ppa
• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
• Update and upgrade
• sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade
• Install PHP v8.0
• sudo apt install php8.0-fpm
• Verify the installation
• php -v
• To install extensions
• sudo apt install php8.0-common php8.0-mysql php8.0-xml php8.0-xmlrpc php8.0-curl php8.0-gd php8.0-imagick php8.0-cli php8.0-dev php8.0-imap php8.0-mbstring php8.0-soap php8.0-zip php8.0-intl unzip -y
• Change cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 to a 0 and uncomment the line.
• sudo nano /etc/php/8.0/fpm/php.ini
• Restart php
• sudo systemctl restart php8.0-fpm
• This is just to check if nginx works and php is being parsed
• sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/[YOURDOMAIN.com]

server {
    listen 80;
    root /var/www/html;
    index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
    server_name [YOURDOMAIN.com];

    location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
            include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
            fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
            deny all;
    }
}

• To create symlink to enabled sites
• sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/YOURDOMAIN.COM /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
• To remove default link
• sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
• Test the whole config
• sudo nginx -t
• To apply all changes
• sudo systemctl reload nginx
• To start a new PHP file.
• sudo nano /var/www/html/info.php
• Fill it with
• <?php phpinfo();
• Command to get rid of test file
• sudo rm /var/www/html/info.php
• Note: If you ever need to restore the default configuration, you can do so by recreating the symbolic link, like this:
• sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

INSTALL NODEJS

• Get Node JS packages
• curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | sudo -E bash -
• Install the packages
• sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
• Update and upgrade
• sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade

CREATE LOCATION FOR LARAVEL FILES

• cd /var/www
• sudo mkdir laravel
• sudo chown [new user]:www-data laravel/

SET NEW SITE INFO

• sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/[YOURDOMAIN.com]
• Modify Nginx (Taken from the Laravel docs)

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name [YOURDOMAIN.com] [www.YOURDOMAIN.com];
    root /var/www/laravel/public;
 
    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
 
    index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
 
    charset utf-8;
 
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }
 
    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
 
    error_page 404 /index.php;
 
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
 
    location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
        deny all;
    }
}

• Test the server configuration
• sudo nginx -t
• Reload the server
• sudo systemctl reload nginx

INSTALL COMPOSER

• cd
• Install composer
• curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
• Move file to access globally on the server
• sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
• Test it out
• composer

INSTALL GIT

• cd /var
• Create repo folder and navigate to it
• sudo mkdir repo && cd repo
• Create site.git folder and navigate to it
• sudo mkdir site.git && cd site.git
• Initialize empty repo here
• sudo git init --bare

SETTING UP GIT HOOKS

• cd hooks
• Create post-receive instructions for Git
• sudo nano post-receive

#!/bin/sh
git --work-tree=/var/www/laravel --git-dir=/var/repo/site.git checkout -f main

• Give permissions and ownership for Git processes
• sudo chmod +x post-receive
• sudo chown -R [newuser]:[newuser] /var/repo/site.git
• cd

CREATE A SWAP FILE BECAUSE LARAVEL IS A BIG PACKAGE

• cd /var/www/laravel
• sudo /bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap.1 bs=1M count=1024
• sudo /sbin/mkswap /var/swap.1
• sudo /sbin/swapon /var/swap.1

FROM TEXT EDITOR OR LOCAL MACHINE CD INTO THE PROJECT

• Make sure to first push changes to origin master and run npm run production before starting any of this
• Make sure you validate your server ssh keys on your system
• eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
• ssh-add .ssh/[DigitalOcean SSH Key]
• Create new production remote repo
• git remote add production [YOUR_USER@YOUR_IP_ADDRESS]:/var/repo/site.git
• git push production

CHECK FOR LARAVEL INSTALLATION ON YOUR SERVER

• cd /var/www/laravel
• List the present files
• ls

SET DEFAULT PERMISSIONS

• Install access control
• sudo apt install acl
• Set permissions for storage
• sudo setfacl -Rm u:www-data:rwX,u:[YOUR USER]:rwX storage/
• sudo setfacl -Rdm u:www-data:rwX,u:[YOUR USER]:rwX storage/
• getfacl storage/

INSTALL VENDOR FILES

Make sure to run optimized commands

• composer update
• composer dump-autoload -o

INSTALL NPM MODULES

• npm install

SET UP DATABASE

• Login as root user
• mysql -u root -p
• [new user login password]
• Create database
• CREATE DATABASE [db name] DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
• Create db user
• CREATE USER '[new db user]'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY '[secure password]';
• Grant all permissions to new user
• GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON [db name]. * TO '[new db user]'@'localhost';
• Flush remaining privileges
• FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
• exit
• Test New user login
• mysql -u[newDBuser] -p

SET UP .ENV FILE

• cd /var/www/laravel
• Copy example file and create new .env
• cp .env.example .env
• Edit the new .env file
• sudo nano .env

APP_NAME="Project Name"
APP_ENV=production
APP_KEY=
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=http://[YOUR IP OR DOMAIN]

LOG_CHANNEL=stack

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=[new db name]
DB_USERNAME=[new db user name]
DB_PASSWORD=[new db user password]

TIME_ZONE=[set your timezone]

• Create new app key
• php artisan key:generate
• Cache the config
• php artisan config:cache

RUN MIGRATIONS

• Make sure ssh password is cleared and regular password has password set in server mysql config
• php artisan migrate

FIX PERMISSIONS

• Give user permissios for both laravel folder as well as storage folder
• sudo chown -R :www-data /var/www/laravel
• sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/laravel/storage

RUN NPM

• npm run build

GET DOMAIN AND LINK IT

• Create custom nameservers
• ns1.digitalocean.com
• ns2.digitalocean.com
• ns3.digitalocean.com

SIGN UP FOR FREE LETSENCRYPT

• Install Certbot
• sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
• Check the server status
• sudo nginx -t
• Reload Nginx
• sudo systemctl reload nginx
• Check Firewall status
• sudo ufw status
• Allow Nginx Full
• sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
• Delete Nginx Http
• sudo ufw delete allow 'Nginx HTTP'
• Add domains to certbot for verification
• sudo certbot --nginx -d [yourdomain] -d [www.yourdomain]
• Add your email
• you@youremail.com
• Agree to the terms
• (A)gree
• Do you want to share your email?
• (N)o
• Do you want to redirect to https?
• 2
• Test certbot renewal
• sudo certbot renew --dry-run

COMMANDS TO TRANSFER IMAGES/FILES FROM DEV ENV. TO PROD. ENV.

• Create the folders in the server first
• From the local terminal outside of the server
• scp storage/app/public/[YOUR IMAGE FOLDERS AND FILE] [NEW USER]@[DOMAIN ISP]:/var/www/laravel/storage/app/public/[YOUR IMAGE FOLDERS AND FILE]
• From the server
• Create symbolic link
• php artisan storage:link

COMMANDS TO RUN WHEN EDITING AFTER ALL THIS IS DONE AND PROJECT IS IN PRODUCTION

• composer dump-autoload -o; php artisan config:cache; php artisan route:cache; php artisan view:cache; npm run build