hosted applications
December 24, 2019
2:05 PM
- [Instructor] In addition to serving up classic web and database services, we can also install and run applications that communicate in other ways. There are many examples of this from a node or rail server running a development project to a game like Minecraft, a service like get, or any number of other things that don't involve the basic services we've seen so far. So I want to give you some general guidelines for hosting an application on your server. It's usually a good idea to make sure that your app runs as its own user in order to isolate it's access to other parts of the system.
If the app becomes compromised it'll be able to run commands with whatever privilege the user running it has. So you don't want to run things as your user or especially as root. Your app will also need to have access to whatever files it needs to operate. So be aware that you might need to change permissions and groups to make that happen. If you're hosting an app that people access over the network, you'll need to make sure that your server's firewall is configured to allow that traffic through. And if your server's behind an internet firewall like a router or other device, you'll also need to make sure that the ports you need are open and forwarded appropriately there as well.
Logging is important, too. Many apps you might install will take care of logging in their own way, either to the system logs or to their own log file. And if you build an app be sure to include logging capabilities so you can keep an eye on how it's working and what it's doing.