Clean up the setup page a little

content/posts/setup_p1.md

@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 +++
 title = 'My Setup - p1'
+subtitle = 'Containers!'
+summary = "I go over the things I've learned about docker, and how I've used it to host my website."
 date = 2024-10-25T23:11:17+03:00
 draft = false
 +++
@@ -25,71 +27,69 @@ This is a cumbersome process. The whole point of using hugo is to *focus on the
 writing*, so having to zip and reupload for every typo is... not great. I
 wanted to be able to do a simple `git push`, and not worry about the rest.
 
-The previous "manual" approach also depends on me having already installed all
+The "manual" approach also depends on me having already installed all
 necessary software. If you have a dedicated server that you're running yourself,
 that's probably okay, you just have to setup once, but I'm running this on a VPS
 that I'm not sure I'll keep forever. The ability to reproduce this exact setup
 within minutes actually matters.
 
-After reading a bit on this topic, I decided I would use podman for this. Docker
+After reading a bit on this topic, I decided I would use docker for this. Podman
 would work just as nicely (any containerization software would work, really),
-but I decided on podman because it can run without a daemon and without root
+but I decided on docker because it's been the standard for a while now
-privilages. Also, it has pretty neat support for kubernetes pods (which are
-honestly a lot more useful than I would've given them credit for before I started
-this whole project).
-
-That's really why I'm writing this. So that you, the reader (or possibly my future self) can
-understand the methodology of podman, how to create pods, run containers and configure all
-of this automatically, and so that I may demonstrate and share what I've learnt during
-this process.
 
 ## Motivation
 
-Basically, I'm already running a web server. Why shouldn't I also host several other services
+Basically, I'm already running a web server. Why shouldn't I also host several
-for friends and family while I'm at it? Why shouldn't I make the entire setup reproducable?
+other services for friends and family while I'm at it? Why shouldn't I make the
+entire setup reproducible?
 
 Here are some of the services I wanted to self-host:
+
 - Web server: obviously, who doesn't want a website?
-    - Some git server: having my own place to show off all the things I've done is certainly really cool.
+- Some git server: having my own place to show off all the things I've done is
+certainly really cool. For this, something like [Gitea](https://about.gitea.com/)
+would normally be great. I went with [Gogs](https://gogs.io/) instead, because
+it is far more lightweight.
 - Wireguard: Free VPN along with the website? sign me up.
-    - CI/CD: automatic testing and releases of my software is cool, and also incredibly useful because that's
+- CI/CD: automatic testing and releases of my software is cool, and also
-how I plan to handle the website as well.
+incredibly useful.
 
-Of course, there are always more things I could be self-hosting. So it makes sense to automate
+Of course, there are always more things I could be self-hosting. So it makes
-the setup, and that's where podman comes in.
+sense to automate the setup, and that's where docker comes in.
 
-## Basics of podman
+## Basics of docker
 
-Before we can get to the exciting stuff, we need to go over what podman is, and how to
+Before we can get to the exciting stuff, we need to go over what docker is, and how to
-use it. Essentially, podman is a container engine: it lets you build and run applications in
+use it. Essentially, docker is a container engine: it lets you build and run
-a containerized environment. Containers are useful because they provide security,
+applications in a containerized environment. Containers are useful because they
-easy setup and most importantly, reproducability.
+provide security, easy setup and most importantly, reproducibility.
 
 I'm not going to spend any more time explaining what containers are and why they're
 good, that's been done to death already. Right now, what matters is the actual setup,
 so let's get on with it.
 
 If you've used docker before, you'll feel right at home. Many commands are unchanged
-from docker, making podman a suitable drop-in replacement. Some things like network
+from docker, making docker a suitable drop-in replacement. Some things like network
 setups tend to be a little different, but that won't matter too much right now.
 
-In case you're unfamiliar with docker, here are some basic commands:
+In case you're unfamiliar with docker, here are some basic commands (run these
+either as root, or as a user in the `docker` group):
 
 ```sh
 # Search for container images (on docker.io unless you configure otherwise)
-$ podman search <image name>
+$ docker search <image name>
 
 # Download (pull) an image from remote repo
-$ podman pull <image name>
+$ docker pull <image name>
 
 # list the images you have pulled.
-$ podman images
+$ docker images
 
 # run a container.
-$ podman run <image name>
+$ docker run <image name>
 
 # run a container, but with a LOT of flags. I just listed the most useful ones.
-$ podman run
+$ docker run
     -i # interactive, so you can e.g. run a shell in the container
     -t # allocates a tty. useful with -i so that shell completion etc. can work
     -d # opposite of -i, detach and run in the background
@@ -99,35 +99,31 @@ $ podman run
     <command> # ... want a shell?
 
 # list running containers. add -a to list ALL containers, running or stopped.
-# podman ps <-a>
+$ docker ps <-a>
 
 # stop a running container.
-$ podman stop <id>
+$ docker stop <id>
 
 # stopped containers don't automatically get removed. This command removes it.
-$ podman rm <id>
+$ docker rm <id>
 ```
 
-## Pods are nice.
+## Compose is nice.
 
-Pods are basically just a collection of containers - multiple programs working
+Docker compose is a nice way to essentially "group together" some containers,
-with each other.
+and ship them in an easy way.
 
 Usually, on a server, each application *isn't* totally separate from each other
 - for my own use case, I want my git server (e.g. gogs) to automatically build
 and update my website whenever I push to its git repository. That means my git
 server and web server can't be *totally* separate, there's some amount of
-relation. Pods can help with this.
+relation.
 
-Pods allow you to create a "pod" containing several containers, sharing resources
+At the same time... I don't really want to set up both containers, then their
-with each other, etc. For example, I could run a pod with nginx and gogs running
+volumes, and their ports etc. by hand. Sure I could stick it in a shell script,
-in seperate containers - then, the nginx server could act as a reverse proxy
+but that's hardly elegant.
-based on host name, showing the web page on emin.software, and the git server on
-git.emin.software. Nginx redirects to gogs which only binds to *the pod's
-localhost address*, so only nginx can reach it. Likewise, a database server can
-be added to the pod only for the git server to use, so that it can't be reached
-from the outside the pod - and it is logically grouped along with the rest of
-the pod.
 
-On top of this, pods can be built purely from a kubernetes-compatible
+Docker compose helps with this: you can create a
-configuration file, so setting them up is relatively easy.
+`compose.yaml` file, and define containers, ports, volumes, secrets all inside
+this file. Then, when you run `docker compose up` this configuration is read,
+and all of it is processed as you would want it to.

public/index.xml

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
       <link>https://emin.software/posts/setup_p1/</link>
       <pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2024 23:11:17 +0300</pubDate>
       <guid>https://emin.software/posts/setup_p1/</guid>
-      <description>My Setup In this &amp;lsquo;series&amp;rsquo; I will be walking you through my process of how I host everything on this server.&#xA;I&amp;rsquo;m currently running, on top of my blog, a gogs instance.&#xA;When first creating this website, I just had my blog. I generated this blog using hugo: a static site generator. Hugo allowed me to focus on writing whatever I wanted in Markdown format, it would take care of converting my writing into HTML and CSS.</description>
+      <description>I go over the things I&amp;rsquo;ve learned about docker, and how I&amp;rsquo;ve used it to host my website.</description>
     </item>
     <item>
       <title>About</title>

public/posts/index.html

@@ -158,9 +158,7 @@
                   My Setup - p1
                 </h4>
                 <p class="mb-4 line-clamp-6 text-base text-slate-500 dark:text-slate-400">
-                  My Setup In this &lsquo;series&rsquo; I will be walking you through my process of how I host everything on this server.
+                  I go over the things I&rsquo;ve learned about docker, and how I&rsquo;ve used it to host my website.
-I&rsquo;m currently running, on top of my blog, a gogs instance.
-When first creating this website, I just had my blog. I generated this blog using hugo: a static site generator. Hugo allowed me to focus on writing whatever I wanted in Markdown format, it would take care of converting my writing into HTML and CSS.
                 </p>
               </div>
               <div class="flex flex-row justify-between">

public/posts/index.xml

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
       <link>https://emin.software/posts/setup_p1/</link>
       <pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2024 23:11:17 +0300</pubDate>
       <guid>https://emin.software/posts/setup_p1/</guid>
-      <description>My Setup In this &amp;lsquo;series&amp;rsquo; I will be walking you through my process of how I host everything on this server.&#xA;I&amp;rsquo;m currently running, on top of my blog, a gogs instance.&#xA;When first creating this website, I just had my blog. I generated this blog using hugo: a static site generator. Hugo allowed me to focus on writing whatever I wanted in Markdown format, it would take care of converting my writing into HTML and CSS.</description>
+      <description>I go over the things I&amp;rsquo;ve learned about docker, and how I&amp;rsquo;ve used it to host my website.</description>
     </item>
   </channel>
 </rss>

public/posts/setup_p1/index.html

@@ -46,9 +46,7 @@
 <meta property="og:url" content="https://emin.software/posts/setup_p1/">
   <meta property="og:site_name" content="haxala1r">
   <meta property="og:title" content="My Setup - p1">
-  <meta property="og:description" content="My Setup In this ‘series’ I will be walking you through my process of how I host everything on this server.
+  <meta property="og:description" content="I go over the things I’ve learned about docker, and how I’ve used it to host my website.">
-I’m currently running, on top of my blog, a gogs instance.
-When first creating this website, I just had my blog. I generated this blog using hugo: a static site generator. Hugo allowed me to focus on writing whatever I wanted in Markdown format, it would take care of converting my writing into HTML and CSS.">
   <meta property="og:locale" content="en_us">
   <meta property="og:type" content="article">
     <meta property="article:section" content="posts">
@@ -58,9 +56,7 @@ When first creating this website, I just had my blog. I generated this blog usin
 
   <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
   <meta name="twitter:title" content="My Setup - p1">
-  <meta name="twitter:description" content="My Setup In this ‘series’ I will be walking you through my process of how I host everything on this server.
+  <meta name="twitter:description" content="I go over the things I’ve learned about docker, and how I’ve used it to host my website.">
-I’m currently running, on top of my blog, a gogs instance.
-When first creating this website, I just had my blog. I generated this blog using hugo: a static site generator. Hugo allowed me to focus on writing whatever I wanted in Markdown format, it would take care of converting my writing into HTML and CSS.">
 
 
 <script>
@@ -154,7 +150,7 @@ When first creating this website, I just had my blog. I generated this blog usin
         My Setup - p1
       </h1>
       <h2 class="mt-4 text-2xl text-slate-500 dark:text-slate-400">
-        
+        Containers!
       </h2>
       <div class="mb-4 mt-2 text-sm text-slate-500 dark:text-slate-400">
         Oct 25, 2024 - 5 minute read
@@ -180,58 +176,58 @@ updated version to my server and put it in the web directory.</p>
 <p>This is a cumbersome process. The whole point of using hugo is to <em>focus on the
 writing</em>, so having to zip and reupload for every typo is&hellip; not great. I
 wanted to be able to do a simple <code>git push</code>, and not worry about the rest.</p>
-<p>The previous &ldquo;manual&rdquo; approach also depends on me having already installed all
+<p>The &ldquo;manual&rdquo; approach also depends on me having already installed all
 necessary software. If you have a dedicated server that you&rsquo;re running yourself,
 that&rsquo;s probably okay, you just have to setup once, but I&rsquo;m running this on a VPS
 that I&rsquo;m not sure I&rsquo;ll keep forever. The ability to reproduce this exact setup
 within minutes actually matters.</p>
-<p>After reading a bit on this topic, I decided I would use podman for this. Docker
+<p>After reading a bit on this topic, I decided I would use docker for this. Podman
 would work just as nicely (any containerization software would work, really),
-but I decided on podman because it can run without a daemon and without root
+but I decided on docker because it&rsquo;s been the standard for a while now</p>
-privilages. Also, it has pretty neat support for kubernetes pods (which are
-honestly a lot more useful than I would&rsquo;ve given them credit for before I started
-this whole project).</p>
-<p>That&rsquo;s really why I&rsquo;m writing this. So that you, the reader (or possibly my future self) can
-understand the methodology of podman, how to create pods, run containers and configure all
-of this automatically, and so that I may demonstrate and share what I&rsquo;ve learnt during
-this process.</p>
 <h2 id="motivation">Motivation</h2>
-<p>Basically, I&rsquo;m already running a web server. Why shouldn&rsquo;t I also host several other services
+<p>Basically, I&rsquo;m already running a web server. Why shouldn&rsquo;t I also host several
-for friends and family while I&rsquo;m at it? Why shouldn&rsquo;t I make the entire setup reproducable?</p>
+other services for friends and family while I&rsquo;m at it? Why shouldn&rsquo;t I make the
-<p>Here are some of the services I wanted to self-host:
+entire setup reproducible?</p>
-- Web server: obviously, who doesn&rsquo;t want a website?
+<p>Here are some of the services I wanted to self-host:</p>
-- Some git server: having my own place to show off all the things I&rsquo;ve done is certainly really cool.
+<ul>
-- Wireguard: Free VPN along with the website? sign me up.
+<li>Web server: obviously, who doesn&rsquo;t want a website?</li>
-- CI/CD: automatic testing and releases of my software is cool, and also incredibly useful because that&rsquo;s
+<li>Some git server: having my own place to show off all the things I&rsquo;ve done is
-how I plan to handle the website as well.</p>
+certainly really cool. For this, something like <a href="https://about.gitea.com/">Gitea</a>
-<p>Of course, there are always more things I could be self-hosting. So it makes sense to automate
+would normally be great. I went with <a href="https://gogs.io/">Gogs</a> instead, because
-the setup, and that&rsquo;s where podman comes in.</p>
+it is far more lightweight.</li>
-<h2 id="basics-of-podman">Basics of podman</h2>
+<li>Wireguard: Free VPN along with the website? sign me up.</li>
-<p>Before we can get to the exciting stuff, we need to go over what podman is, and how to
+<li>CI/CD: automatic testing and releases of my software is cool, and also
-use it. Essentially, podman is a container engine: it lets you build and run applications in
+incredibly useful.</li>
-a containerized environment. Containers are useful because they provide security,
+</ul>
-easy setup and most importantly, reproducability.</p>
+<p>Of course, there are always more things I could be self-hosting. So it makes
+sense to automate the setup, and that&rsquo;s where docker comes in.</p>
+<h2 id="basics-of-docker">Basics of docker</h2>
+<p>Before we can get to the exciting stuff, we need to go over what docker is, and how to
+use it. Essentially, docker is a container engine: it lets you build and run
+applications in a containerized environment. Containers are useful because they
+provide security, easy setup and most importantly, reproducibility.</p>
 <p>I&rsquo;m not going to spend any more time explaining what containers are and why they&rsquo;re
 good, that&rsquo;s been done to death already. Right now, what matters is the actual setup,
 so let&rsquo;s get on with it.</p>
 <p>If you&rsquo;ve used docker before, you&rsquo;ll feel right at home. Many commands are unchanged
-from docker, making podman a suitable drop-in replacement. Some things like network
+from docker, making docker a suitable drop-in replacement. Some things like network
 setups tend to be a little different, but that won&rsquo;t matter too much right now.</p>
-<p>In case you&rsquo;re unfamiliar with docker, here are some basic commands:</p>
+<p>In case you&rsquo;re unfamiliar with docker, here are some basic commands (run these
+either as root, or as a user in the <code>docker</code> group):</p>
 <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-sh" data-lang="sh"><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># Search for container images (on docker.io unless you configure otherwise)</span>
-</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ podman search &lt;image name&gt;
+</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ docker search &lt;image name&gt;
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># Download (pull) an image from remote repo</span>
-</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ podman pull &lt;image name&gt;
+</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ docker pull &lt;image name&gt;
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># list the images you have pulled.</span>
-</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ podman images
+</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ docker images
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># run a container.</span>
-</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ podman run &lt;image name&gt;
+</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ docker run &lt;image name&gt;
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># run a container, but with a LOT of flags. I just listed the most useful ones.</span>
-</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ podman run
+</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ docker run
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>    -i <span style="color:#75715e"># interactive, so you can e.g. run a shell in the container</span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>    -t <span style="color:#75715e"># allocates a tty. useful with -i so that shell completion etc. can work</span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>    -d <span style="color:#75715e"># opposite of -i, detach and run in the background</span>
@@ -241,34 +237,30 @@ setups tend to be a little different, but that won&rsquo;t matter too much right
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>    &lt;command&gt; <span style="color:#75715e"># ... want a shell?</span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># list running containers. add -a to list ALL containers, running or stopped.</span>
-</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># podman ps &lt;-a&gt;</span>
+</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ docker ps &lt;-a&gt;
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># stop a running container.</span>
-</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ podman stop &lt;id&gt;
+</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ docker stop &lt;id&gt;
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>
 </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span><span style="color:#75715e"># stopped containers don&#39;t automatically get removed. This command removes it.</span>
-</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ podman rm &lt;id&gt;
+</span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>$ docker rm &lt;id&gt;
-</span></span></code></pre></div><h2 id="pods-are-nice">Pods are nice.</h2>
+</span></span></code></pre></div><h2 id="compose-is-nice">Compose is nice.</h2>
-<p>Pods are basically just a collection of containers - multiple programs working
+<p>Docker compose is a nice way to essentially &ldquo;group together&rdquo; some containers,
-with each other.</p>
+and ship them in an easy way.</p>
 <p>Usually, on a server, each application <em>isn&rsquo;t</em> totally separate from each other</p>
 <ul>
 <li>for my own use case, I want my git server (e.g. gogs) to automatically build
 and update my website whenever I push to its git repository. That means my git
 server and web server can&rsquo;t be <em>totally</em> separate, there&rsquo;s some amount of
-relation. Pods can help with this.</li>
+relation.</li>
 </ul>
-<p>Pods allow you to create a &ldquo;pod&rdquo; containing several containers, sharing resources
+<p>At the same time&hellip; I don&rsquo;t really want to set up both containers, then their
-with each other, etc. For example, I could run a pod with nginx and gogs running
+volumes, and their ports etc. by hand. Sure I could stick it in a shell script,
-in seperate containers - then, the nginx server could act as a reverse proxy
+but that&rsquo;s hardly elegant.</p>
-based on host name, showing the web page on emin.software, and the git server on
+<p>Docker compose helps with this: you can create a
-git.emin.software. Nginx redirects to gogs which only binds to <em>the pod&rsquo;s
+<code>compose.yaml</code> file, and define containers, ports, volumes, secrets all inside
-localhost address</em>, so only nginx can reach it. Likewise, a database server can
+this file. Then, when you run <code>docker compose up</code> this configuration is read,
-be added to the pod only for the git server to use, so that it can&rsquo;t be reached
+and all of it is processed as you would want it to.</p>
-from the outside the pod - and it is logically grouped along with the rest of
-the pod.</p>
-<p>On top of this, pods can be built purely from a kubernetes-compatible
-configuration file, so setting them up is relatively easy.</p>
 
       </span>
     </article>