Deploy with PM2 + Ferron

PM2 is a process manager for Node.JS applications with a built-in load balancer. Ferron is a fast, memory-safe web server written in Rust, that can be also used as a reverse proxy. This tutorial will guide you on how to deploy MERNMail application with PM2 and Ferron on GNU/Linux systems.

1. Clone the Repository

First, change your working directory to your home directory, and clone the MERNMail repository:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/mernmail/mernmail.git
cd mernmail

2. Install Dependencies and Build the Application

Navigate to the project directory, install the necessary dependencies, and build the MERNMail application:

npm install
npm run build

3. Configuration

Copy the .env.example file to a .env file in the root directory of the project. The configuration options can be found in the Configuration page.

4. Install and Set Up PM2

Install and set up PM2:

npm install -g pm2
pm2 start npm --name "MERNMail" --start
pm2 startup

After running the pm2 startup command, run the command shown in the terminal to start the PM2 daemon when the OS boots up.

5. Install and Set Up Ferron

Install Ferron using the command below:

sudo bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://downloads.ferronweb.org/install.sh)"

After installing Ferron, open your preferred text editor, and save these contents to the /etc/ferron.yaml file (replace /home/user with path to your home directory; also check the port the MERNMail application listens to; this configuration causes Ferron to only listen to port 80):

global:
  loadModules:
    - rproxy

hosts:
  - domain: '*'
    customHeaders:
      x-content-type-options: nosniff
      Content-Security-Policy: >-
        default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'
        'sha256-VA8O2hAdooB288EpSTrGLl7z3QikbWU9wwoebO/QaYk='
        'sha256-+5XkZFazzJo8n0iOP4ti/cLCMUudTf//Mzkb7xNPXIc='
        'sha256-MS6/3FCg4WjP9gwgaBGwLpRCY6fZBgwmhVCdrPrNf3E='
        'sha256-tQjf8gvb2ROOMapIxFvFAYBeUJ0v1HCbOcSmDNXGtDo='; style-src 'self'
        'unsafe-inline'; img-src 'self' data: *; frame-src 'self' data:
      Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin
      Permissions-Policy: 'geolocation=(), camera=(), microphone=(), fullscreen=*'
      Feature-Policy: 'geolocation ''none'', camera ''none'', microphone ''none'', fullscreen *'
    locations:
      - path: /api
        proxyTo: 'http://localhost:3000'
        # If there was "http://localhost:3000/api" value in "proxyTo" property and no URL rewriting,
        # then the API requests would be proxied to MERNMail with URL that begins with "http://localhost:3000/api/api/"
      - path: /
        wwwroot: /home/user/mernmail/frontend/dist

6. Restart Ferron

Restart Ferron using either sudo systemctl restart ferron or sudo /etc/init.d/ferron restart command.

Updating MERNMail

To update the MERNMail webmail application, run these commands:

cd ~/mernmail
git pull
npm install
npm run build

After updating MERNMail, restart MERNMail using the pm2 restart "MERNMail" command.