Jaroslav Beneš
ba2fb1e13d
Two things the running instance needed. **Registration toggle.** Admin -> General, backed by a new settings table group rather than the environment. LEMBAS_ALLOW_SIGNUP now seeds only the initial value: once an administrator saves the setting, the stored value wins. The alternative -- environment always winning -- means a toggle in the UI silently reverts on the next restart, which is worse than not offering one. Closing registration also removes the "Create one" link from the sign-in page, so the link never leads somewhere that refuses. **Password change**, on the user settings page. Changing a password revokes every other session and immediately re-issues a cookie for the current one: if the reason for the change is that somebody else knows the password, leaving their session alive defeats the point, but signing the user out of the tab they are standing in is merely rude. **deploy/ is now host-agnostic.** This repository is public, so the unit and vhost became templates with __PREFIX__ / __SITE_HOST__ / __APP_PORT__ substituted at install time, and every path, hostname and port moved to environment variables. REPO_URL defaults to the checkout's own origin so a fork deploys itself. Machine-specific values belong in private notes, not here -- CLAUDE.md now says so. 83 tests, ruff clean. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
3.4 KiB
Deployment
Installs LLeMbas as a system service behind nginx with a self-signed certificate. Written for a systemd + nginx host; tested on Arch.
| Default | |
|---|---|
| Service user | lembas (system account, nologin) |
| Home | /home/lembas |
| Install prefix | /srv/lembas (bind mount of the home) |
| Checkout | $PREFIX/app |
| Virtualenv | $PREFIX/venv |
| Database | $PREFIX/data/lembas.db |
| Environment | $PREFIX/lembas.env (mode 600) |
| Unit | /etc/systemd/system/lembas.service |
| Vhost | /etc/nginx/conf.d/<host>.conf |
| Listens on | 127.0.0.1:8080 — reachable only through nginx |
The prefix defaults to a bind mount of the service user's home because on many
machines the root filesystem is small while /home is not, and the virtualenv
plus database belong on the larger volume. Set PREFIX=$HOME_DIR to skip it.
First install
SITE_HOST=chat.example ./deploy/install.sh
Idempotent — safe to re-run. It creates the user and bind mount, clones the
repo, builds the venv, generates lembas.env with a fresh LEMBAS_SECRET_KEY,
installs the unit and vhost, issues a self-signed certificate, adds a
/etc/hosts entry if the name does not already resolve, and enables the
service.
Then open https://<SITE_HOST>, accept the certificate warning, and create the
first account — it becomes the administrator.
Everything is overridable from the environment:
| Variable | Default | |
|---|---|---|
SITE_HOST |
lembas.local |
nginx server_name and certificate CN |
APP_PORT |
8080 |
loopback port the service binds |
SERVICE_USER |
lembas |
system account to run as |
HOME_DIR |
/home/lembas |
that account's home |
PREFIX |
/srv/lembas |
install root (bind mount of HOME_DIR) |
REPO_URL |
this checkout's origin |
so a fork deploys itself |
LEMBAS_BRANCH |
main |
branch to deploy |
Deploying a change
git push
./deploy/update.sh
update.sh fetches, hard-resets the deployment checkout to origin/main,
reinstalls dependencies and restarts, printing the commits it pulled. The hard
reset is deliberate: nothing is ever edited in place there, so there is no local
work to preserve and no conflicts to resolve.
Operating it
systemctl status lembas
journalctl -u lembas -f
sudo -u lembas /srv/lembas/venv/bin/lembas info # paths and counts
Configuration lives in $PREFIX/lembas.env. Edit it and restart.
Notes
The secret key is generated once. install.sh will not overwrite an
existing lembas.env. Rotating LEMBAS_SECRET_KEY signs every user out and
makes stored upstream API keys unreadable — they would have to be re-entered.
nginx buffering is off for a reason. Replies stream as server-sent events.
With proxy_buffering on (the default) nginx holds the entire reply and
delivers it in one lump at the end, which is indistinguishable from streaming
being broken. proxy_read_timeout is raised to an hour because a model can
think for minutes before the first token.
Hardening is deliberately moderate. ProtectSystem=full, not strict: the
agentic features planned for later need to run commands, and a lockdown that
has to be torn out again is worse than one that was never applied.
Use a real certificate if this is exposed beyond a trusted LAN. The
self-signed cert exists so the install works with no external dependencies;
point ssl_certificate at a real one and nothing else needs to change.