Scripts and guide on how to deploy Klaxon on your own server

Klaxon enables reporters and editors to monitor scores of sites on the web for newsworthy changes.

To deploy klaxon using this repo you'll need docker and docker-compose.

This method uses Gmail as email notification server, so you'll also need a gmail account. If you have your own SMTP server you can just replace the server details in the .env file and that should work as well.

Steps:

1. create an application password for the gmail account that will act as notifier

   • go to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
   • add a new application and save the generated password (16 characters)

2. edit .env and provide values for the following vars

   • SECRET_KEY_BASE - add a randomly generated password
   • POSTGRES_PASS - add a randomly generated password
   • GMAIL_USERNAME - the email address which acts as sender/notifier (see step 1.)
   • GMAIL_PASSWORD - the password generated at step 1. (but dont forget to delete any white spaces)

3. create the folder for database persistence with mkdir pgdata and fetch the klaxon source code with git submodule update --init

4. start the stack using docker-compose up in a separate terminal

   • the klaxon container will be built on the first run
   • when it's done, you should be able to access its web interface at http://localhost:3000

5. find out klaxon's container name using docker ps; should be something like klaxon-deploy_klaxon_1

6. in a new terminal access the klaxon container using docker exec -it <container-name> bash

7. add an admin user using the command bundle exec rake users:create_admin RAILS_ENV=production ADMIN_EMAILS=<your_admin_email>

8. go to the web UI, enter the admin email and check your inbox for the login link; you should now have access to the administration dashboard

9. finally, add a cron job that will trigger the checks at specific intervals eg. crontab -e

# perform checks every 10 minutes
*/10 * * * * docker exec <klaxon-container> bundle exec rake check:all

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