1. Install NodeJS and NPM.
2. Create a directory to house all the distributed server files.

mkdir -p /opt/constellation/dist

3. Download and unzip the provided zip file into that location.

$ unzip ./constellation-server-1.1.0.zip -d /opt/constellation/dist
$ cd /opt/constellation/dist
$ ls

constellation-server.js
server.properties
user-management.js
package.json
package-lock.json

4. Install node dependencies

npm install --production

5. All of our custom config files and stored data will be persisted up one directory to separate it from the distributed server files. This makes it easier to upgrade in the future. Copy the the server.properties file up one directory, and edit it to match your needs.

mv ./server.properties ../
vim ../server.properties

6. Run the server, providing the properties file as an argument.

node ./constellation-server.js ../server.properties

7. It's recommended you configure the server to run as a system service to allow for auto-restarts and monitoring. We use PM2 for this.

# Further reading: https://www.npmjs.com/package/pm2

npm install -g pm2
pm2 start ./constellation-server.js -- ../server.properties

Before users can join this server, you'll need to generate authorization keys for each user. The users.json file will not exist until after the server has been started for the first time.

1. Make sure you're in the right directory:

cd /opt/constellation/dist

2. To generate a new user registration token:

node ./user-management.js ../users.json generate

3. To list all users, and all tokens available for use:

node ./user-management.js ../users.json list

4. To remove access for a user:

node ./user-management.js ../users.json revoke <client-id>

5. View all available commands by running:

node ./user-management.js help

So you've successfully deployed the server, but then we released a new version. Now what? The process comes down to replacing these 4 files with their newer versions, and regenerating your node_modules folder.

constellation-server.js
user-management.js
package.json
package-lock.json

If you followed our install instructions, all the files that need to be upgraded exist inside your ./dist directory, and the ./dist directory does not contain any configuration or data files. If all that is true, then you can follow these steps:

1. Create a backup of your deployment, just in case something goes wrong.

cp -r /opt/constellation /opt/constellation_backup

2. Stop the current server. Depending on how you deployed it, this may vary, but for pm2:

pm2 list  # To get the app id
pm2 stop <app-id>

3. Delete your ./dist directory's contents.

rm -rf /opt/constellation/dist/*

4. Download and unzip the new version's zip file into your ./dist directory.

$ unzip ./constellation-server-1.1.0.zip -d /opt/constellation/dist
$ cd /opt/constellation/dist
$ ls

constellation-server.js
server.properties
user-management.js
package.json
package-lock.json

5. Your server.properties file should already exist inside /opt/constellation, so if you'd like you can remove the new one to avoid confusion:

rm -f /opt/constellation/dist/server.properties

6. Install node dependencies

npm install --production

7. Start up the new server using your preferred method. We use pm2:

pm2 list  # To get the app id
pm2 start <app-id>

8. Clean up the backup you created in step 1:

rm -rf ./opt/constellation_backup