nginx

Working behind nginx

The bare WSGI server is fine for local use, but a real HTTP server such as nginx and Apache might be your best choice if you are deploying SilverDict to the cloud. There are plenty of guides around the web on how to set up nginx to host a web site, so I will not go into details here. But do make sure you at least have made the nginx default page show up before proceeding.

Preparing the web app

Everything you need is inside server/build. If you do not plan to deploy SilverDict to the root of your domain, you will need to change the homepage field in client/package.json to the path you want to deploy to. (Do not forget to change the server address in client/src/config.js.) Then you have to run yarn build yourself. The files will be generated in client/build.

Deployment

Move the files generated in the previous step to the directory where nginx serves files from, e.g. /srv/www/htdocs on openSUSE. Now try visiting the site. You should see the web UI of SilverDict.

Configuring nginx

Now we need to configure nginx to proxy requests to the Python WSGI server running at port 2628. Here's a sample config:

server {
	server_name example.me www.example.me;

	listen 443 ssl reuseport fastopen=10; # managed by Certbot
	ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.me/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
	ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.me/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
	include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
	ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

	location / {
		root   /srv/www/htdocs/;
		index  index.html index.htm;
	}

	location /api/ {
		proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2628;
	}
}
server {
	if ($host = www.example.me) {
		return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
	} # managed by Certbot


	if ($host = example.me) {
		return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
	} # managed by Certbot


	listen 80 reuseport fastopen=10;
	server_name example.me www.example.me;
	charset utf-8;

	sendfile on;
	tcp_nopush on;
	tcp_nodelay on;
	keepalive_requests 10000;
	keepalive_timeout 2h;
	return 404; # managed by Certbot
}

Running the server

The recommended way to start and stop the Python server is to use systemd. Create a file named silverdict.service in /etc/systemd/system with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=SilverDict
After=syslog.target network.target

[Service]
User=[Your normal user name]
Group=users
WorkingDirectory=/home/[Your normal user name]/server
ExecStart=python3.11 server.py

Restart=always
RestartSec=120

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then you can start the server with systemctl start silverdict and stop it with systemctl stop silverdict.

At this point you should be able to use SilverDict in your browser. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the issue tracker.