##Making Ghost run forever
The previously described method to start Ghost is npm start. This is a good way to do local develpment and tests, but if you start Ghost using the command line it will stop whenever you are closing the terminal window or log out from SSH. To prevent Ghost from stopping you have to run Ghost as a service. There are two ways to accomplish this.
###Forever (https://npmjs.org/package/forever)
You can use forever to run Ghost as a background task. forever will also take care of your Ghost installation and it will restart the node process if it crashes.
- To install forever type
npm install forever -g - To start Ghost using
foreverfrom the Ghost installation directory typeNODE_ENV=production forever start index.js - To stop Ghost type
forever stop index.js - To check if Ghost is currently running type
forever list
###Supervisor (http://supervisord.org/)
Popular Linux distributions—such as Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu—maintain a package for Supervisor: A process control system which allows you to run Ghost at startup without using init scripts. Unlike an init script, Supervisor is portable between Linux distributions and versions.
Install Supervisor as required for your Linux distribution. Typically, this will be:
- Debian/Ubuntu:
apt-get install supervisor - Fedora:
yum install supervisor - Most other distributions:
easy_install supervisor - Ensure that Supervisor is running, by running
service supervisor start -
Create the startup script for your Ghost installation. Typically this will go in
/etc/supervisor/conf.d/ghost.confFor example:[program:ghost] command = node /path/to/ghost/index.js directory = /path/to/ghost user = ghost autostart = true autorestart = true stdout_logfile = /var/log/supervisor/ghost.log stderr_logfile = /var/log/supervisor/ghost_err.log environment = NODE_ENV=”production”
Start Ghost using Supervisor: supervisorctl start ghost
To stop Ghost: supervisorctl stop ghost
You can see the documentation for Supervisor for more information.
Init Script Linux systems use init scripts to run on system boot. These scripts exist in /etc/init.d. To make Ghost run forever and even survive a reboot you could set up an init script to accomplish that task. The following example will work on Ubuntu and was tested on Ubuntu 12.04.
Create the file /etc/init.d/ghost with the following command:
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sudo curl https://raw.github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-Config/master/init.d/ghost -o /etc/init.d/ghost
Open the file with nano /etc/init.d/ghost and check the following:
Change the GHOST_ROOT variable to the path where you installed Ghost
Check if the DAEMON variable is the same as the output of which node
The Init script runs with it’s own Ghost user and group on your system, let’s create them with the following:
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sudo useradd -r ghost -U
Let’s also make sure the Ghost user can access the installation:
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sudo chown -R ghost:ghost /path/to/ghost
Change the execution permission for the init script by typing
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sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/ghost
Now you can control Ghost with the following commands:
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sudo service ghost start
sudo service ghost stop
sudo service ghost restart
sudo service ghost status
To start Ghost on system start the newly created init script has to be registered for start up. Type the following two commands in command line:
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sudo update-rc.d ghost defaults
sudo update-rc.d ghost enable
Let’s make sure your user can change files, config.js for example in the Ghost directory, by assigning you to the ghost group: sudo adduser USERNAME ghost
If you now restart your server Ghost should already be running for you.
##Setting up Ghost with a domain name
If you have setup up Ghost to run forever you can also setup a web server as a proxy to serve your blog with your domain. In this example we assume you are using Ubuntu 12.04 and use nginx as a web server. It also assumes that Ghost is running in the background with one of the above mentioned ways.
Install nginx
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sudo apt-get install nginx
This will install nginx and setup all necessary directories and basic configurations.
Configure your site
Create a new file in /etc/nginx/sites-available/ghost.conf
Open the file with a text editor (e.g. sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/ghost.conf) and paste the following
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server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com;
location / {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;
}
} Change `server_name` to your domain
Symlink your configuration in sites-enabled:
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sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/ghost.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ghost.conf Restart nginx
sudo service nginx restart
##Setting up Ghost with SSL
After setting up a custom domain it is a good idea to secure the admin interface or maybe your whole blog using HTTPS. It is advisable to protect the admin interface with HTTPS because username and password are going to be transmitted in plaintext if you do not enable encryption.
The following example will show you how to set up SSL. We assume, that you have followed this guide so far and use nginx as your proxy server. A setup with another proxy server should look similar.
First you need to obtain a SSL certificate from a provider you trust. Your provider will guide you through the process of generating your private key and a certificate signing request (CSR). After you have received the certificate file you have to copy the CRT file from your certificate provider and the KEY file which is generated during issuing the CSR to the server.
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mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl
cp server.crt /etc/nginx/ssl/server.crt
cp server.key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key
After these two files are in place you need to update your nginx configuration.
Open the nginx configuration file with a text editor (e.g. sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/ghost.conf)
Add the settings indicated with a plus to your configuration file:
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server {
listen 80;
+ listen 443 ssl;
server_name example.com;
+ ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/server.crt;
+ ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key;
...
location / {
+ proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
+ proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
+ proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;
...
}
} Restart nginx
sudo service nginx restart After these steps you should be able to reach the admin area of your blog using a secure HTTPS connection. If you want to force all your traffic to use SSL it is possible to change the protocol of the url setting in your config.js file to https (e.g.: url: 'https://my-ghost-blog.com'). This will force the use of SSL for frontend and admin. All requests sent over HTTP will be redirected to HTTPS. If you include images in your post that are retrieved from domains that are using HTTP an 'insecure content' warning will appear. Scripts and fonts from HTTP domains will stop working.
In most cases you’ll want to force SSL for the administration interface and serve the frontend using HTTP and HTTPS. To force SSL for the admin area the option forceAdminSSL: true was introduced.
If you need further information on how to set up SSL for your proxy server the official SSL documention of nginx and apache are a perfect place to start.
