jprjr/ubuntu-nodejs repository overview

#jprjr/ubuntu-nodejs

This is an image for running a basic NodeJS app - it uses forever to auto-reload your NodeJS app as files update.

⁠How to use this image

This image runs in the /home/default folder as the default user. You should use volumes to bring in your NodeJS app. You specify the script's path with the NODEJS_SCRIPT environment variable, and arguments with the NODEJS_SCRIPT_ARGS environment variable.

⁠Environment variables list

As usual, you can make a file at /private/nodejs/vars instead of declaring environment variables:

• NODEJS_SCRIPT - the path to your NodeJS script
  • Note: this will be run from the /home/default directory - your path must be a relative path from that. If you use an absolute path, forever will try to monitor the entire filesystem (and fail).
• NODEJS_SCRIPT_ARGS - args to pass to your NodeJS script
• NODEJS_NO_AUTOREFRESH - set this to 1 if you don't want the script to autorefresh on files changing.

⁠Making derivations of this image

If you want to install a particular app, you'll want to make a new image sourcing this one, install GCC, make etc, and go through your app's installation process.

One trick to keep your image from blowing up is to write out a build script, and in your build script, install gcc, etc, install the app, then remove gcc etc. This way, only one layer is committed.

If you use a bunch of RUN commands, like

RUN apt-get install -y gcc
RUN <whatever>
RUN apt-get remove -y gcc

Then each RUN command gets saved to disk - making that last apt-get remove not really do anything.

Here's a handy cheat-sheet for installing a particular app - I'm going to use Ghost⁠ as an example:

The important steps:

• Set a default script to run in /etc/s6/nodejs/vars
• Create patterns to ignore in /home/default/.foreverignore

First, the Dockerfile

FROM jprjr/ubuntu-nodejs:latest

ADD build.sh /tmp/build.sh
RUN /tmp/build.sh

EXPOSE 2368

Then, the script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

apt-get update && apt-get install -y nodejs python g++ make git
su -c 'curl -L https://ghost.org/zip/ghost-latest.zip -o /home/default/ghost.zip' \
   -s /bin/bash default
su -c 'cd /home/default unzip -uo ghost.zip -d ghost' \
   -s /bin/bash default
su -c 'cd /home/default/ghost && npm install --production' \
   -s /bin/bash default
cp /home/default/ghost/config.example.js /home/default/ghost/config.js
sed -i 's/127.0.0.1/0.0.0.0/g' /home/default/ghost/config.js
chown default:default /home/default/ghost/config.js

apt-get remove -y g++ make git
apt-get autoremove -y

echo "NODEJS_SCRIPT=ghost/index.js" >> /etc/s6/nodejs/vars
echo "*.db" >> /home/default/.foreverignore