Ghost.js on CentOS

Ghost.js is a clean blogging only software with minimalistic design aesthetics and responsive web design. It comes with pretty decent functionality out of the box and its themes can be extended easily using handlebars . The bhira.net blog is running on Ghost.js and I wrote this post as a recollection of the steps I followed in setting up this server. This post describes how to setup Ghost.js blogging software on a CentOS server. These instructions are meant for a production server and will use MySQL for storage and run nodejs using pm2 (process manager for Node). Nginx is used as a proxy server for nodejs.

Here are the main steps:

Setup MySQL
Setup Nginx
Setup nodejs
Setup ghost.js
Setup pm2
Setup theme

Install Remi repository for CentOS 6 which depends on Fedora EPEL repository

Check available MySQL versions

yum –enablerepo=remi list mysql mysql-server

Install MySQL

yum –enablerepo=remi install mysql.x8664 mysql-server.x8664

Start MySQL and enable auto start on boot

/etc/init.d/mysqld start
check for errors in /var/log/messages
check for errors and temp root password in /var/log/mysqld.log
chkconfig –list | grep mysqld

MySQL secure installation

/usr/bin/mysqlsecureinstallation
mysql -u root -p
show plugins;
uninstall plugin validate_password;
set password for ‘root’@’localhost’ = ’new-password’;

Install nginx yum repository
vi /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo

[nginx]
name=nginx repo
baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/centos/6/$basearch/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=0

yum –enablerepo=nginx install nginx
chkconfig –list httpd
chkconfig –level 3 httpd off
chkconfig –level 3 nginx on
service start nginx
vi /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html
vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
nginx log rotation - /etc/logrotate.d/nginx

edit config: vi /etc/logrotate.d/nginx
test run: /etc/cron.daily/logrotate

#FILE: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user  nginx;
worker_processes  1;
error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
  include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
  default_type  application/octet-stream;

  log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                    '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                    '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

  access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

  sendfile on;
  keepalive_timeout 65;
  gzip on;
  server_tokens off;
  include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}

#FILE: /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf

server {
    listen       80;
    listen       [::]:80;
    server_name  localhost www.my-server.com;

    location /robots.txt {
        alias /usr/share/nginx/html/robots.txt;
    }

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header HOST $http_host;
        proxy_hide_header X-Powered-By;
    }

    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}

#FILE: /usr/share/nginx/html/robots.txt

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://my-server.com/rss

yum -y update
yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools"

# ----- upgrade g++ and set in bash env -----
sudo curl http://linuxsoft.cern.ch/cern/scl/slc6-scl.repo > /etc/yum.repos.d/slc6-scl.repo
sudo rpm --import http://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/51/i386/RPM-GPG-KEYs/RPM-GPG-KEY-cern
sudo yum install -y devtoolset-3
scl enable devtoolset-3 bash
g++ -v

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz
tar zxf node-*.tar.gz
cd node-v*
./configure
make
make install
node --version
npm --version

cd <install dir>
npm install -g grunt-cli
wget http://ghost.org/zip/ghost-latest.zip
Unzip ghost-latest.zip
npm install --production
mv config.example.js config.js
vi config.js
    ...
    // ##use gmail
    mail: {
      service: 'Gmail',
      transport: 'SMTP',
      host: 'smtp.gmail.com',
      secureConnection: true,
      port: 465,
      options: {
        auth: {
          user: 'email@gmail.com',
          pass: 'my-gmail-password'
        }
      }
    },

    // ##use mysql
    database: {
      client: 'mysql',
      connection: {
        host     : '127.0.0.1',
        user     : 'mysql-user',
        password : 'mysq-user-passwd',
        database : 'mysql-db',
        charset  : 'utf8'
      },
      pool: {
        min: 2,
        max: 20
      }
    },
    ...

# run node in production mode
NODE_ENV=production node index.js

sudo /usr/local/bin/npm install -g pm2
vi /etc/init.d/ghost
chmod 755 /etc/init.d/ghost
chkconfig –add ghost
chkconfig –list ghost
vi /etc/logrotate.d/pm2
service ghost start

#!/bin/bash
#
# FILE: /etc/init.d/ghost
# processname: ghost
#
# chkconfig: 345 80 20
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: ghost
# Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $remote_fs
# Should-Start: $network
# Should-Stop: $network
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
### END INIT INFO

export NODE_ENV=production
export HOME=/home/myuser

NAME=ghost
PM2=/usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2
NODE=/usr/local/bin/node
USER=myuser

APP_DIR=/home/myuser/ghost
APP_START=index.js
APP_NAME=$NAME

super() {
    su -l $USER -c "$1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8"
}

start() {
    echo "Starting $NAME"
    cd $APP_DIR
    super NODE_ENV=production $NODE $PM2 start ${APP_DIR}/${APP_START} -x --name $APP_NAME
}

stop() {
    echo "Stopping $NAME"
    cd $APP_DIR
    super NODE_ENV=production $NODE $PM2 stop ${APP_DIR}/${APP_START} -x --name $APP_NAME
}

restart() {
    echo "Restarting $NAME"
    stop
    start
}

status() {
    echo "Status for $NAME:"
    cd $APP_DIR
    super $NODE $PM2 list
    RETVAL=$?
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        start
        ;;
    stop)
        stop
        ;;
    status)
        status
        ;;
    restart)
        restart
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: {start|stop|status|restart}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac
exit $RETVAL

# FILE: /etc/logrotate.d/pm2

/home/myuser/.pm2/logs/*.log {
    daily
    rotate 30
    compress
    delaycompress
    missingok
    notifempty
    sharedscripts
    copytruncate
    dateext
}

Now you’re all set with Ghost running on your CentOS server and you can start configuring your blog. Ghost includes a pretty extensible framework for creating themes and I’ve created one named casper-slidr. You can read more about this theme or download it for GitHub .

Posted on May 4, 2014 at 18:08

Baldeep Hira's Blog

bay area programmer

Ghost.js on CentOS