vps-app

Trying to create a production grade vps hosted app using AWS free tier

Disposition

• AWS setup
• Local setup
• EC2 setup

AWS setup

Create user

Create your user -> User name: Me -> Next -> Next -> Create user

Create a policy requiring MFA which grants access to all ec2 actions. We will use this to easily get the instance IP later. Add some inline permissions to your user -> JSON ->

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowDescribeInstancesWithMFA",
            "Action": "ec2:*",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "Bool": {
                    "aws:MultiFactorAuthPresent": "true"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

Policy name: MFA-EC2

Let's setup a MFA device with Device name: MyPhone -> Authenticator app -> Next -> Finalize setup, then click Add MFA.

Returning to your Security credentials page, we copy the MFA arn to ~\.aws\config:

[profile default]
region = eu-north-1
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::03...:mfa/MyPhone

Let's also create our access key to this user -> Command Line Interface (CLI) -> I understand... -> Create access key. Copy the secrets into ~\.aws\credentials:

[default]
aws_access_key_id = AK...
aws_secret_access_key = dj...

Create EC2 instance

Go and create an ec2 instance. The defaults are fine, but you should remember to add a Key pair (login) and allow HTTPS and HTTP traffic from the internet. You may also want to increase your Root volume to e.g. 30 GiB, which is included in the free tier. You should remember the instance name for later (i-0caec4bd0b4fdf500)

Local setup

Goal: Be able to SSH into the EC2 instance.

OPTIONAL: Neovim has many icons. Install Nerdfont to utilize them

Install UV

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Install AWSCLI & Awsume

uv tool update-shell
uv tool install awscli
uv tool install awsume
uv tool run --from awsume --with setuptools awsume-configure
source ~/.bashrc

Setup SSH

We authenticate to AWS, then get the instance IP. Remember to change i-0caec4bd0b4fdf500 to the name of your instance and ~/.ssh/stationary to the path to your key.

awsume
# Enter MFA token: 564720
# Session token will expire at 2024-12-15 09:37:54
IP=$(aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids i-0caec4bd0b4fdf500 --query "Reservations[*].Instances[*].PublicIpAddress" --output text)
ssh -i ~/.ssh/stationary ec2-user@$IP
   ,     #_
   ~\_  ####_        Amazon Linux 2023
  ~~  \_#####\
  ~~     \###|
  ~~       \#/ ___   https://aws.amazon.com/linux/amazon-linux-2023
   ~~       V~' '->
    ~~~         /
      ~~._.   _/
         _/ _/
       _/m/'
Last login: Sat Dec 14 19:15:21 2024 from ...
exit
[ec2-user@ip-... ~]$ logout
Connection to 13.60.252.89 closed.

Setup VSCode

WARNING: 1GB RAM may be insufficient and crash the machine.

Use the above to create an entry in ~/.ssh/config

Host ec2
  HostName 13.60.252.89
  User ec2-user
  IdentityFile ~\.ssh\stationary

In case you're on WSL, you need to run the following in windows echo C:\Windows\system32\wsl.exe ssh %* > %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\ssh.bat And add the following to your settings.json "remote.SSH.path": "C:\\Users\\Christoffer\\.ssh\\ssh.bat"

Let's connect via VSCode now:

code --install-extension ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh
code --folder-uri vscode-remote://ssh-remote+ec2/home/ec2-user

Aliases

We can add an alias ec2 to our .bashrc using the following command:

echo $'
alias ec2=\'awsume && ssh -i ~/.ssh/stationary ec2-user@$(aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids i-0caec4bd0b4fdf500 --query "Reservations[*].Instances[*].PublicIpAddress" --output text) -t "tmux attach || tmux new"\'
alias start-ec2="awsume && aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids i-0caec4bd0b4fdf500"
alias watch-ec2="awsume && watch aws ec2 describe-instances --query Reservations[0].Instances[0].State.Name"
alias stop-ec2="awsume && aws ec2 stop-instances --instance-ids i-0caec4bd0b4fdf500"
' >> ~/.bashrc

After restarting the shell, ec2 should now drop you directly into the remote. Use start-ec2 and stop-ec2 to manipulate the instance.

EC2 setup

Install tmux, git and UV:

sudo yum install -y tmux
sudo yum install -y git
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Install docker in AWS and docker compose

sudo yum update -y
sudo yum install -y docker
sudo service docker start
sudo usermod -a -G docker ec2-user

Restart your SSH connection, and the following should work: docker ps

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m) -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
docker-compose version

Install DevContainer:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.5/install.sh | bash
source /home/ec2-user/.bashrc
nvm install node
npm install -g @devcontainers/cli

Launch Devcontainer

• Delete previous container
• Build
• Launch
• Connect

docker container rm --force $(docker container ps -q | grep ".*")  || \
devcontainer build --workspace-folder . && \
devcontainer up --workspace-folder . && \
devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . tmux -u

We can use watchfiles to auto-trigger the above upon changing .devcontainer/Devfile

uvx watchfiles $'bash -c \'docker container rm --force $(docker container ps -q | grep ".*") || \
devcontainer build --workspace-folder . && \
devcontainer up --workspace-folder . && \
devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . tmux -u\''

Let's use tmuxp to auto-create a session for modifying the Devfile. Create the file `~/vps-app/.devcontainer/tmuxp.yaml

session_name: Devcontainer
windows:
  - window_name: Devcontainer window
    layout: main-vertical
    shell_command_before:
      - cd ~/vps-app
    panes:
      - uvx watchfiles $'
          bash -c \'docker container rm --force $(docker container ps -q | grep ".*") ||
          devcontainer build --workspace-folder . &&
          devcontainer up --workspace-folder . &&
          devcontainer exec --workspace-folder . tmux -u\'' .devcontainer
      - cd .devcontainer && vim Devfile
      - top

And create an alias for running this config

echo $'
alias ec2-devcontainer=\'awsume && ssh -i ~/.ssh/stationary ec2-user@$(aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids i-0caec4bd0b4fdf500 --query "Reservations[*].Instances[*].PublicIpAddress" --output text) -t "uvx tmuxp load ~/vps-app/.devcontainer/tmuxp.yaml"\'
' >> ~/.bashrc

To be continued...