Nnpy — Setup

Setting up Nnpy locally and adding Systemd service

Nnpy requires packages under Debian distribution (similar packages for other distributions).

virtualenv
python3
sqlite3
python3-dev (Build Only)
build-essential (Build Only)

After installing packages, create a virtual environment under the root directory of Nnpy and activate it.

$ virtualenv -p python3 env/
Already using interpreter /usr/bin/python3
Using base prefix '/usr'
New python executable in /app/env/bin/python3
Also creating executable in /app/env/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pkg_resources, pip, wheel...done.
$ source env/bin/activate

Now, install Python modules which are used by Nnpy.

flask
uwsgi

(env) $ pip3 install -r requirements.txt

The packages marked as “Build Only” in the list above are required to build the dependencies and can be uninstalled later.

Now we need to create a database with the pastes table with two columns for id and data.

$ cat nnpy.sql | sqlite3 nnpy.db

Nnpy is ready to run now. It can be run directly by starting the web server. Alternatively, it can create a UNIX socket which can be used by proxy servers like Nginx to proxy the web requests to Nnpy. The wsgi.ini file handles the configuration. Default settings will run it in HTTP mode and start web server which will listen at port 5000.

Execute the subsequent command to test uwsgi in place.

(env) $ uwsgi --ini wsgi.ini

Systemd, which is the default init system and service manager in a lot of popular Linux Distributions, use service files to manage services. Please create a new file with the following content and save it as nnpy.service.

[Unit]
Description=nnpy paste
After=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/nnpy/
Environment='PATH=/path/to/nnpy/env/bin'
ExecStart=/path/to/nnpy/env/bin/uwsgi --ini nnpy.ini
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
KillSignal=SIGQUIT
Type=notify
StandardError=syslog
NotifyAccess=all
Group=www-data

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To add the service file to Systemd, you need to copy the file into /etc/systemd/system/ folder.

$ cp nnpy.service /etc/systemd/system/

Now, Systemd daemon needs to reload to recognize and process the service file.

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Now the web app can be run by executing the following command.

$ sudo service nnpy start

To set the service to run on boot, execute the following command.

$ sudo systemctl enable nnpy.service