My Digital Ocean Server Setup

published 09/09/16

I wanted to document how I like to setup my Digital Ocean servers, so here are those notes.

Create Droplet

Start by using the Digital Ocean interface to create a droplet - it's that big green button in the upper right. ;)

These days I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 and I usually do fine with the cheapest box. I also like to enable Backups in case something terrible happens.

Root User SSH Setup

When you create a new Droplet, be sure to add your SSH keys and Digital Ocean will copy them to the root user's authorized_keys file automatically. That means you can SSH into the new server like this:

$ ssh root@ipaddress

Create Dev User

To create a user:

root@servername:~# adduser dev

Use 1Password to set a really long password.

Add Dev User to Sudo Group

root@servername:~# gpasswd -a dev sudo

Add Server to 1Password

Create an entry in 1Password for the server providing both the dev user's password and the servers's IP Address.

Copy SSH Keys to Dev User

Since we added our SSH keys to the root users's authorized_keys during Droplet creation, let's copy those keys over to our new dev user:

root@servername:~# mkdir /home/dev/.ssh
root@servername:~# cp .ssh/authorized_keys /home/dev/.ssh/
root@servername:~# chown -R dev:dev /home/dev/.ssh/

Configure SSH

We're going to configure SSH so that only our authorized_keys will work for SSH and while we're at it, we're going to disable root login.

root@servername:~# nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Make the following changes:

PermitRootLogin no
...
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
...
PasswordAuthentication no
...
UsePAM no

With those changes made, restart the ssh service so that they take effect:

root@servername:~# service ssh restart

Add SSH Config

In order to make SSHing into the machine easier, add an entry to your SSH config:

$ vim ~/.ssh/config

Host servername
  Hostname ipaddress
  User dev

With those settings, you can now SSH into the machine like this:

$ ssh servername

Generating SSH Keys for Dev User

dev@servername:~$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "user@example.com"
dev@servername:~$ eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
dev@servername:~$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Configure GitHub

In order to use SSH on the repos you clone down from GitHub, you'll want to add the server's public key. There's a nice write up on how to do this, but you'll need to copy the key down to your machine:

$ ssh servername 'cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub' | pbcopy

Next, head over to the GitHub SSH Settings page and add the key. Then you can confirm that it worked with this:

dev@servername:~$ ssh -T git@github.com

Install Some Softwarez

dev@servername:~$ sudo apt-get update
dev@servername:~$ sudo apt-get install curl git silversearcher-ag tmux vim zsh

Install RVM and Latest Ruby

dev@servername:~$ curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash
dev@servername:~$ rvm install 2.3.1

Change Dev User to Use ZSH

dev@servername:~$ chsh -s /bin/zsh

You'll need to log out and back in for this to take affect.

Create Code Folder

dev@servername:~% mkdir code

Install Dotfiles

I'd be lost without the Hashrocket dotfiles and commands, so I have to have them on the servers I setup:

dev@servername:~/code% git clone git@github.com:hashrocket/dotmatrix.git
dev@servername:~/code% cd dotmatrix
dev@servername:~/code/dotmatrix% bin/install

But then I also like to add my own:

dev@servername:~/code% git clone git@github.com:jonallured/dotfiles.git
dev@servername:~/code% cd dotfiles
dev@servername:~/code/dotfiles% rake install

Install Vimbundles

Once you've got dotmatrix setup, install your vim plugins:

dev@servername:~/code% hr vimbundle

Snapshot This Config

You can save the state of a Digital Ocean server by creating a snapshot. To do this, you first have to power off the machine:

dev@servername:~% sudo poweroff

Then use the Digital Ocean interface to take your snapshot:

Droplets > [Pick Droplet] > Snapshots > Take Snapshot

You might want to pick a name like "basic config" or something and then you can use it to either restore or create new droplets.

One thing I'd note here is that the keys generated for this server will be used when using this snapshot. When you have a server you want to restore to a known state, that's a good thing, but when you what to use the snapshot to make a new server, I'd say those keys should be re-generated.