webrtc-signaling-server

work locally

To test the signaling server locally, you must have installed nodejs.

If you have it:

• clone the repo with just git clone git@github.com:ciamiz/webrtc-signaling-server.git;
• cd into the project folder;
• run npm install to get the dependencies;
• run npm start to launch the server.

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Tip: if you don't have a tool to communicate with the signaling server using the web sockets, you can wscat. Install it globally with npm install -g wscat, then launch it with wscat -c ws://localhost:8888.

requirements for setup and deploy

In order to be able to properly setup an hosting server and then deploy the application to it, you must have a .env file where you specifiy these environment variables:

• SSH_KEY_PATH: which should contain the path to your public ssh key, usually ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub;
• HOST: which should be the ip address of the hosting server;
• USERNAME: which represents the username of the application user on the hosting server.

hosting server setup

The production server is a nodejs installation upon ubuntu server 16.04 (not 17.04, nodejs isn't supported very well, yet). It'll use the pm2 package to manage the application process during it's entire lifecycle.

setting up the application user

Once logged in as root, first of all retrieve and apply tha latest software updates with:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade -y

Then create a user for the application and add it to the sudoers group:

adduser app

Change app with whatever username you like. From now on, remember to update it with the name you choose in this step.

You'll be asked to provide a password for the new user and to confirm it.

You will also be asked of a bunch of information about the user that you probably never use, so skip them all hitting the ENTER key 10⁴² times until the shell prompt appears again.

Created the user, add it to the sudoers group with:

adduser app sudo

Optional

If you don't want to be bothered with password asking for sudo commands via SSH or during the deploy process, run:

echo 'app ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

install software dependencies

The application need the latest version of:

• nginx as reverse proxy;
• nodejs as application server;
• pm2 as node process manager.

Login into the server as the brand new application user and install nginx with:

sudo apt-get install nginx -y

If the installation finish without throwing errors, you should see something like "Welcome do nginx!" visiting the server ip address through the web browser.

The next step is the installation of nodejs, the application server, with:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install nodejs -y

Check that the installation went well with node -v. You should see something like v8.x.x.

The last software needed to properly run the signaling server is pm2, node process manager. This package provides an easy way to manage and daemonize node applications.

sudo npm install -g pm2

The -g option tells npm to install the module globally, so that it's available system-wide.

Verify that pm2 has been installed correctly running pm2 -v. An ASCII art welcome message should confirm you that everything has been done correctly.

environment configuration

First of all we have to allow remote users to log into the server without password, using ssh keys. In order to achieve this, we have to generate the ssh keys for the server itself running:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

You'll be asked where to store the new key and if you'd like to setup a passphrase. Let's just hit ENTER right now and complete the creation of the keys.

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Attention: before moving on, check the the required .env file contains the required variables. In the next helper scripts isn't yet provided any form of error handling. Also, you have to be sure that all the helper scripts are executable running npm run config:scripts.

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To proceed with the configuraion, we first have to exchange our local ssh keys with the server using the npm helper script npm run config:ssh.

Once done the exchange, running npm run config:nginx will setup the reverse proxy. By default, it will listen on port 80 reversing to the 8888. If you want to change this values, look at the nginx.conf:12 and server.js:2 files.

We now have to set the process manager to start on boot:

npm run config:pm2

deploy

Attention: it is assumed that you have already make all the scripts executable with npm run config:scripts and exchanged keys with the server running npm run config:ssh.

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The deploy process consists in a single command. It changes whether it is the first deploy ever or a next one. If it's the first time you deploy the application on a new server, you have to run:

npm run deploy:initial

If, instead, is a deploy on the already-running application, use

npm run deploy