Skip to content

Server Setup

Deploy Apiary to a server with nginx and systemd.

Prerequisites

  • Ubuntu 20.04+ or Debian 11+ server (e.g. AWS Lightsail)
  • Python 3.12+
  • nginx
  • systemd

The _server/scripts/install.sh script handles the full setup in one pass: packages, uv, git clone, dependencies, config init, nginx, and systemd.

# Clone the repo first, then run the installer
git clone https://github.com/lancereinsmith/apiary.git
bash apiary/_server/scripts/install.sh --domain api.example.com

--domain is optional — the script will prompt for it if omitted.

What it does:

  1. Installs git, nginx, curl, and certbot via apt
  2. Installs uv (if not already present)
  3. Clones the repository to ~/apiary
  4. Runs uv sync --frozen --no-dev (production dependencies only)
  5. Creates the logs/ directory
  6. Runs apiary init to generate config files (skipped if they already exist)
  7. Generates a random 256-bit SECRET_KEY and injects it into the systemd service
  8. Adds your user to the www-data group for unix socket access
  9. Copies and patches the nginx config with your domain
  10. Copies and enables the systemd service

After the script finishes:

# Edit config with your API keys and settings
nano ~/apiary/config/settings.json

# Start the service
sudo systemctl start apiary
sudo systemctl status apiary

# Optional: enable HTTPS
sudo certbot --nginx -d api.example.com

Manual Installation

Follow these steps if you prefer to set things up by hand.

1. Install Dependencies

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git nginx curl python3-certbot-nginx

# Install uv
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

2. Clone and Setup

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/lancereinsmith/apiary.git
cd apiary

uv sync --frozen --no-dev

# Initialize configuration
uv run apiary init

# Edit with production values
nano config/settings.json

3. Configure nginx

sudo cp _server/nginx/apiary.nginx /etc/nginx/sites-available/apiary

# Update server_name to your domain
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/apiary

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/apiary /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

4. Configure systemd

sudo cp _server/systemd/apiary.service /etc/systemd/system/apiary.service

# Set your SECRET_KEY
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/apiary.service

# Enable and start
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable apiary
sudo systemctl start apiary
sudo systemctl status apiary

sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com

Verification

# Check service
sudo systemctl status apiary

# Check logs
sudo journalctl -u apiary -f

# Test endpoint
curl https://yourdomain.com/health

Next Steps