README

This is a demo for Wroclowe.rb featuring a small SerpApi-powered application for tracking keywords and Kamal configuration for simple VPS deployment.

Kamal

Initial setup

First, create a VPS server on Digital Ocean with the cloud-init configuration from config/cloud-init.sh. Then update config/deploy.yml and create .env with your environment.

To deploy the application with Kamal, run kamal setup:

kamal setup

Something wrong with the accessory? Reboot it:

kamal lock release
kamal accessory boot [ACCESSORY]
kamal deploy

Flight check

Check snapshots are being written in logs and in S3 bucket:

kamal accessory logs litestream
kamal accessory exec litestream generations /rails/storage/production.sqlite3

Restores

Here's how to restore the database. Start the maintainance mode and stop Litestream before continuing.

kamal accessory exec litestream snapshots /rails/storage/production.sqlite3
kamal app maintenance
kamal accessory stop litestream

Now let's delete the database so we can put the restore:

kamal shell
> rm storage/production.sqlite3*

(Or delete the files directly from /var/lib/docker/volumes/serptrail_storage/_data if the app container is not available.)

Restore the db files, restart litestream, and restart the application:

kamal app stop
kamal accessory exec litestream restore /rails/storage/production.sqlite3
kamal accessory start litestream
kamal app boot
kamal app live

To restore with point-in-time, add -timestamp TIMESTAMP to restore like this:

kamal accessory exec litestream "restore -timestamp 2026-04-13T14:50:24Z /rails/storage/production.sqlite3"

Restores to a new server

If you want to run a copy of the app on a new server with the latest backup, you might need to restore from Litestream before Rails creates an empty database.

kamal server bootstrap
kamal accessory boot litestream
# Update permissions for /rails/storage
kamal server exec "docker run --rm -v serptrail_storage:/rails/storage alpine chown -R 1000:1000 /rails/storage"
kamal accessory exec litestream restore /rails/storage/production.sqlite3
kamal setup

Audits

See Kamal audit on each host:

kamal audit

See fail2ban audit:

kamal server exec sudo cat /var/log/fail2ban.log
kamal server exec sudo cat /var/log/auth.log

See system log for a service:

sudo journalctl _SYSTEMD_UNIT=docker.service -n 1000