Migrating from GitLab Pages (or put any name here) to a private webserver has one main advantage: to be in control of all its data.
Problems #
You have most certainly read or heard that self-hosting a website is a very bad idea because:
- it might pose security risks
- it is unreliable
- it is hard to maintain
- etc…
and all of that is true. For this specific website I don’t care. It is just a blog…
Howtos #
Up until now I used a system called Gitlab CI/CD. Every time I committed to the git repository a Docker worker would rebuild the website. That usually took from 3 to 5 minutes!
Since this website is generated using Jekyll I followed this guide but created a new file called hooks/post-receive which is a little different to the one in the tutorial:
#!/usr/bin/bash -l
#
# The MIT License (MIT)
#
# Copyright (c) 2008-present Tom Preston-Werner and Jekyll contributors
# 2021 Franco Masotti
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
# of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
# in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
# to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
# copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
# SOFTWARE.
TMP_GIT_CLONE=""${HOME}"/tmp/myrepo"
PUBLIC_WWW='/var/www/blog.frnmst.duckdns.org'
# Install Ruby Gems to ~/gems
export GEM_HOME=""${HOME}"/gems"
export PATH="${GEM_HOME}"/bin:"${PATH}"
GEMFILE=""${TMP_GIT_CLONE}"/Gemfile"
git clone "${GIT_DIR}" "${TMP_GIT_CLONE}"
BUNDLE_GEMFILE="${GEMFILE}" bundle install
BUNDLE_GEMFILE="${GEMFILE}" bundle exec \
jekyll build \
--trace \
--strict_front_matter \
--verbose \
--trace \
--source "${TMP_GIT_CLONE}" \
--destination "${PUBLIC_WWW}"
rm --recursive --force "${TMP_GIT_CLONE}"
Moreover, before running that git hook:
- install ruby:
apt-get install ruby ruby-dev - add the deploy user to the webserver running group. The deploy user must have access to the destination directory
- login as the deploy user
add this to its
~/.profile:export GEM_HOME="$(ruby -e 'puts Gem.user_dir')" export PATH="$PATH:$GEM_HOME/bin"- install bundle:
gem install bundle
That’s it.