Pad Thing with CodiMD

CodiMD is a browser-based real-time collaborative markdown notes/pad kind of thing.

Prerequisites

• Node v8.x https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v8.x (tested with v8.15, support for v10.x is on the way)
• A MySQL database, for now it only works with an utf8 db, specifically CHARACTER SET = utf8 COLLATE = utf8_general_ci
• a user with limited rights
• SSL certs
• NGINX HTTP server

Installation and Configuration

• get latest CodiMD stable release from https://github.com/hackmdio/codimd/releases (1.2.1 at time of writing)

wget https://github.com/hackmdio/codimd/archive/1.2.1.tar.gz
tar xvf 1.2.1.tar.gz

• give it a place to stay if you like...

mv codimd-1.2.1 /path/to/somewhere/codimd
cd /path/to/somewhere/codimd

• Edit config.json

{
   "production": {
       "host": "localhost",
       "debug": "false",
       "port": "3000",
       "domain": "${FQDN}",
       "sessionSecret": "${RANDOM_CRAP}",
       "useCDN": "false",
       "protocolUseSSL": "true",
       "allowOrigin": "['localhost']",
       "allowFreeURL": "true",
       "forbiddenNoteIDs": "['robots.txt']",
       "imageUploadType": "filesystem",
       "db": {
           "username": "${DB_USER}",
           "password": "${DB_USER_PASSWORD}",
           "database": "${DB}",
           "host": "localhost",
           "port": "3306",
           "dialect": "mysql"
       },
       "csp": {
           "enable": "true",
           "directives": {
               "scriptSrc": "${FQDN}"
           },
           "upgradeInsecureRequests": "auto",
           "addDefaults": "true"
       }
  }
}

• You can fill the config as such:
  • ${FQDN}: your absolute domain name, ie subdomain.domain.yolo
  • ${RANDOM_CRAP}: for instance cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c 32; echo
  • ${DB_USER}, ${DB_USER_PASSWORD}, ${DB}: info from the MySQL db and user you created for this app
• Edit .sequelizerc with the relevant MySQL info, again.

var path = require('path');

module.exports = {
   'config':          path.resolve('config.json'),
   'migrations-path': path.resolve('lib', 'migrations'),
   'models-path':     path.resolve('lib', 'models'),
   'url':             'mysql://${DB_USER}:${DB_USER_PASSWORD}@localhost:3306/${DB}'
}

• Build

npm run build

• prepare database:

node_modules/.bin/sequelize db:migrate

• Make a site entry for you NGINX config, something along those lines:

server {
   listen 443;

   server_name subdomain.domain.yolo;

   access_log /var/log/nginx/subdomain.domain.yolo-access.log;
   error_log /var/log/nginx/subdomain.domain.yolo-error.log;

   location / {
       proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
       proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;

       proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
       proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_set_header Host $host;
       proxy_http_version 1.1;
       proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;

       proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
       proxy_redirect off;

   }
}

• Done!

Running CodiMD

Testing from the shell

(Or running from screen/tmux)

• su as your limited rights user:

su pooruser -s /bin/sh

• start CodiMD like this:

NODE_ENV="production" CMD_USECDN="false" CMD_ALLOW_GRAVATAR="false" node app.js

As a systemd service

TODO

Notes

• Configuration in CodiMD is a bit inconsistent, some settings exist in several places (like the db stuff, why???), and even though env variables are mirroring the config.json keys, some of these options will only work if passed as env variables... For instance "useCDN": "false" does not work, but CMD_USECDN="false" does.
• By default client files, including the upload folder, will live inside the CodiMD folder, it can be moved elsewhere though, there are several options for setting various paths
• "useCDN": "false" and CMD_USECDN="false" will prevent pulling stuff from various CDN, and serve the needed files from your server directly, which is nice. Similarly it's possible to disable Gravatar for registered users.
• You can set debug to true in config.json if you need more verbose output when trying things out