Skip to content

Installation

TL;DR:

If you are in a hurry to install it on your server and are OK with downloading random scripts off the Internet, ssh in as root and run this:

curl https://piku.github.io/get | sh

Warning

This installation method is not recommended for production servers, and was added after an incredible amount of requests for a one-liner. It is safe to use on a fresh server, but you MUST always read scripts before running them.

piku requires Python 3, uWSGI, ssh, and a Linux distribution that runs systemd, such as Raspbian Jessie/Debian 8+/Ubuntu/Fedora/CentOS.

There are 3 main ways to install piku on a server:

  1. Use piku-bootstrap to do it if your server is already provisioned (that is what the TL;DR command does)

  2. Use cloud-init to do it automatically at VPS build time (see the cloud-init repository, which has examples for most common cloud providers)

  3. Manually: Follow the guide below or one of the platform-specfic guides.

There is also an Ansible playbook.

Contributing

If you are running piku on specific Linux versions, feel free to contribute your own instructions.

Generic Installation Steps

Set up the piku user

piku requires a separate user account to run. To create a new user with the right group membership (we're using the built-in www-data group because it's generally thought of as a less-privileged group), enter the following command:

# pick a username
export PAAS_USERNAME=piku
# create it
sudo adduser --disabled-password --gecos 'PaaS access' --ingroup www-data $PAAS_USERNAME
# copy & setup piku.py
sudo su - $PAAS_USERNAME -c "wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/piku/piku/master/piku.py && python3 ~/piku.py setup"

The setup output should be something like this:

Creating '/home/piku/.piku/apps'.
Creating '/home/piku/.piku/repos'.
Creating '/home/piku/.piku/envs'.
Creating '/home/piku/.piku/uwsgi'.
Creating '/home/piku/.piku/uwsgi-available'.
Creating '/home/piku/.piku/uwsgi-enabled'.
Creating '/home/piku/.piku/logs'.
Setting '/home/piku/piku.py' as executable.

Set up ssh access

If you don't have an ssh public key (or never used one before), you need to create one. The following instructions assume you're running some form of UNIX on your own machine (Windows users should check the documentation for their ssh client, unless you have Cygwin installed).

On your own machine, issue the ssh-keygen command and follow the prompts:

ssh-keygen 

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/youruser/.ssh/id_rsa): 
Created directory '/home/youruser/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in /home/youruser/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/youruser/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
85:29:07:cb:de:ad:be:ef:42:65:00:c8:d2:6b:9e:ff youruser@yourlaptop.lan
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
<...>
+-----------------+

Copy the resulting id_rsa.pub (or equivalent, just make sure it's the public file) to your piku server and do the following:

sudo su - piku
python3 piku.py setup:ssh /tmp/id_rsa.pub

Adding key '85:29:07:cb:de:ad:be:ef:42:65:00:c8:d2:6b:9e:ff'.

Now if you look at .ssh/authorized_keys, you should see something like this:

sudo su - piku
cat .ssh/authorized_keys

command="FINGERPRINT=85:29:07:cb:de:ad:be:ef:42:65:00:c8:d2:6b:9e:ff NAME=default /home/piku/piku.py $SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND",no-agent-forwarding,no-user-rc,no-X11-forwarding,no-port-forwarding ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDhTYZi/qeJBKgU3naI8FNjQgeMYnMsEtqrOmUc4lJoPNH2qBUTNkzwThGqsBm2HNLPURWMiEifBqF+kRixMud67Co7Zs9ys7pwFXkJB9bbZasd2JCGfVZ4UYXHnvgejSWkLAV/4bObhsbP2vWOmbbm91Cwn+PGJgoiW08yrd45lsDmgv9cUAJS3e8LkgVELvIDg49yM5ArB88oxwMEoUgWU2OniHmH0o1zw5I8WXHRhHOjb8cGsdTYfXEizRKKRTM2Mu6dKRt1GNL0UbWi8iS3uJHGD3AcQ4ApdMl5X0gTixKHponStOrSMy19/ltuIy8Sjr7KKPxz07ikMYr7Vpcp youruser@yourlaptop.lan

This line is what enables you to ssh (and perform git over ssh operations) to the piku user without a password, verifying your identity via your public key, restricting what can be done remotely and passing on to piku itself the commands you'll be issuing.

Test

From your machine, do:

ssh piku@pi.lan

Usage: piku.py [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  The smallest PaaS you've ever seen

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  apps              List applications
  config            Show application configuration
  config:get        Retrieve a configuration setting
  config:live       Show live configuration settings
  config:set        Set a configuration setting
  deploy            Deploy an application
  destroy           Destroy an application
  disable           Disable an application
  enable            Enable an application
  logs              Tail an application log
  ps                Show application worker count
  ps:scale          Show application configuration
  restart           Restart an application
  setup             Initialize paths
  setup:ssh         Set up a new SSH key
Connection to pi.lan closed.