Guide: How to Deploy Meteor / Telescope on Centos
Deploying meteor or telescope can be tricky sometimes especially when it comes to centos support. Here are the steps I am following to deploy my meteor app.
Development Environment:
- OSX
Production Environment:
- Linode 1GB
- Centos 7
- Apache
Software Stack on production:
- Mongo DB
- Node.js 0.10.35
- NodeJS “Forever” module to start application in the background
I am not using NGINX as most of the people suggest as I already have a lot of applications running on Apache.
Just make sure that all the development libraries are available:
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yum update yum groupinstall "Development Tools" |
Install Node.js
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wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.35/node-v0.10.35.tar.gz tar xvfz node-v0.10.35.tar.gz cd node-v0.10.35 ./configure make sudo make install |
Install MongoDB
Create a /etc/yum.repos.d/mongodb.repo file to hold the following configuration information for the MongoDB repository:
For 64 bit:
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[mongodb] name=MongoDB Repository baseurl=http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/redhat/os/x86_64/ gpgcheck=0 enabled=1 |
For 32 bit:
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[mongodb] name=MongoDB Repository baseurl=http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/redhat/os/i686/ gpgcheck=0 enabled=1 |
And:
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yum install mongo-10gen mongo-10gen-server |
The server setup is done. Please don’t need that you don’t need to install meteor or telescope in your production environment.
Package your app
On your local (development) machine, go to your meteor / telescope app directory and enter the following command:
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meteor build --directory yourapp_prod |
It will build a new directory in your app directory named “yourapp_prod” It contains the bundle of your app. Compress yourapp_prod and upload to your servers home directory.
Push app to server
Make sure the port is free. If it is not free, you can use 3000 instead of 8080. Uncompress the file in your server’s /home directory and try start your app in the following series of commands:
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cd yourapp_prod/bundle/programs/server export PORT=8080 export MONGO_URL=mongodb://localhost:27017/yourapp_db export ROOT_URL=http://yourapp_domain/ npm install cd ../../../ node bundle/main.js |
It might give the following error that I am not sure about:
/home/yourapp_prod/bundle/programs/server/node_modules/fibers/future.js:173
throw(ex);
^
Error: /home/yourapp_prod/bundle/programs/server/npm/npm-bcrypt/node_modules/bcrypt/build/Release/bcrypt_lib.node: invalid ELF header
at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
at Module.require (module.js:364:17)
at require (module.js:380:17)
at bindings (/home/yourapp_prod/bundle/programs/server/npm/npm-bcrypt/node_modules/bcrypt/node_modules/bindings/bindings.js:74:15)
at Object.<anonymous> (/home/yourapp_prod/bundle/programs/server/npm/npm-bcrypt/node_modules/bcrypt/bcrypt.js:1:97)
at Module._compile (module.js:456:26)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10)
at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
But there is a fix for that:
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cd /home/yourapp_prod/bundle/programs/server npm install bcrypt cp -r /home/yourapp_prod/bundle/programs/server/node_modules/bcrypt /home/yourapp_prod/bundle/programs/server/npm/npm-bcrypt/node_modules/ |
Let’s try to run the app again:
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cd /home/yourapp_prod node bundle/main.js |
It should work ok now. Try to enter http://yourapp_domain:8080/ in the browser and it should work.
But the problem is if you quit your terminal, your app will stop working. You can install node “forever” module to run your app in the background.
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npm -g install forever forever start yourapp_prod/bundle/main.js |
But you don’t want to make it work with http://yourapp_domain:8080/, you want to make it work with http://yourapp_domain/
You can configure a reverse proxy in your apache configuration. In case of Centos 7, you need to create some file like /etc/httpd/conf.d/yourapp_domain.conf. The contents of the file will be something like:
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<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName yourapp_domain ProxyRequests off <Proxy *> Order deny,allow Allow from all </Proxy> <Location /> ProxyPass http://localhost:8080/ ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:8080/ </Location> </VirtualHost> |
In my case, the app is running at port 8080, you can change the port number accordingly.
Restart apache now and your are DONE.
If you want more support or want to hire me, feel free to write in comments on write me directly at ping@qasimzeeshan.com