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2022-12-03
Technology

Self host Plausible with Fly

Plausible.io đź’ś Fly.io

<embed src="https://open.spotify.com/episode/2cOtHxrAgroTAMTSL7Q063?si=c073c6d722c249eb"></embed>
<callout icon="🆕" color="green">
<span color="gray">Upgraded to version 2.0 following instructions </span><span color="gray">here</span><span color="gray"> </span><span color="gray"><mention-date start="2023-08-15"/></span><span color="gray"> </span>

<span color="gray">The latent docker image issue was gone, simply using the latest release tag </span><span color="gray">plausible@latest</span><span color="gray"> in Dockerfile would work</span>
<span color="gray">City level data is automatically downloaded. Set an env variable </span><span color="gray">MAXMIND_LICENSE_KEY</span><span color="gray"> before app startup if you need it</span>
<span color="gray">Ran into some Clickhouse connection issue during app boot up, resolved by setting CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE_URL (plausible_events_db) and DATABASE_URL (plausible_db) with their ip v4 addresses</span>
</callout>

Plausible.io is an open source alternative to Google Analytics created by some inspiring indie devs. Its vision to be transparent about how website traffic data is handled really separates it apart from other proprietary alternatives. I first came across it from above Indie Hacker Podcast and managed to get it hosted on an EC2 container. However, the AWS bills increased too fast that I had to switch to Fly.io for cheaper hosting.

How

By following the rule of “Don’t reinvent the wheel”, I found that similar need was already addressed by others, well summarized in a blog post plus a code repository.

I basically went through the same process by following the instructions, besides fixing some issues related to outdated information. In addition, I also enabled the https://github.com/plausible/analytics/pull/1449 available in recent release.

Problems

<details>
<summary>Plausible deployment failures</summary>
- Caused by under provisioning
Solution:
```bash
fly scale memory 1024
```
- release_command in fly.toml failed to create and migrate DB
> I wound up deploying once to create the DB, then again to migrate the DB when the first deploy failed to run.
Solution:
1. Update fly.toml
```diff

  • release_command = 'db migrate'

+ release_command = 'db createdb'
```
2. Deploy
3. Run the migration command
```bash
fly ssh console
entrypoint.sh db migrate
```
</details>
<details>
<summary>The latest docker image release are behind development (i.e. master branch)</summary>
- DB connection issue. Fly.io does all internal networking over IPv6, and that required a Change to how phoenix apps are built. The phx generators have been updated, but it required a PR for plausible.
- The other issue is that I wanted to force_ssl , but that’s a compile-time configuration
```elixir
config :plausible, PlausibleWeb.Endpoint,
force_ssl: [rewrite_on: [:x_forwarded_proto]],
```
- Missing features like region/city level information
Solution:
1. Fork https://github.com/plausible/analytics
2. Copy fly.toml from the plausible directory to the forked analytics directory
3. Deploy change fly deploy
</details>

Guides

Prerequisite

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Make sure fly CLI is installed and is logged in to be able to run other commands

brew install fly
fly auth login

Postgres DB

fly pg create plausible-db

Clickhouse

  1. cd clickhouse
  1. fly apps create plausible_clickhouse
  1. fly vol create plausible_clickhouse_data
  1. fly deploy

Plausible (Analytics)

  1. cd plausible
  1. fly apps create plausible
  1. fly pg attach plausible-db
  1. Set secrets

```bash
openssl rand -base64 64 | tr -d '\n' ; echo
fly secrets set SECRET_KEY_BASE=<FROM ABOVE> \
ADMIN_USER_NAME=<username> \
ADMIN_USER_EMAIL=<email> \
ADMIN_USER_PWD=<password> \
BASE_URL=<host_url>
```

  1. fly scale memory 1024 scale up to avoid under provision

Add Cities Level Data

Based on https://github.com/plausible/analytics/discussions/2324

  1. cd plausible
  1. Create a volume for geo data

fly vol create myapp_data
```shell

fly.toml

[mounts]
source="myapp_data"
destination="/data"
```

  1. Download geonames.csv & geolite2-city.mmdb to the container

1. fly ssh console
2. cd /data
```bash

geonames.csv

wget https://s3.eu-central-1.wasabisys.com/plausible-application/geonames.csv

geolite2-city.mmdb

export MAXMIND_LICENSE_KEY=LNpsJCCKPis6XvBP # replace this with your own
wget "https://download.maxmind.com/app/geoip_download?edition_id=GeoLite2-City&license_key=${MAXMIND_LICENSE_KEY}&suffix=tar.gz" -O geolite2-city.mmdb.gz
gunzip geolite2-city.mmdb.gz
```

  1. Set Secrets to the data location

```bash
fly secrets set IP_GEOLOCATION_DB='/data/geolite2-city.mmdb' GEONAMES_SOURCE_FILE='/data/geonames.csv'
```

DNS Entries / SSL

fly certs create <BASE_URL>

---

Note:
<details>
<summary>Self host on EC2 guide</summary>
1. Bootstrap an EC2 Ubuntu instance (e.g. t2.medium, \> 2G RAM) w/ security group inbound rules configured
- HTTP 80
- HTTPS 443
2. Install Nginx https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-and-configure-nginx
3. Install Docker & Docker Compose for Ubuntu
1. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-on-ubuntu-20-04
2. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-compose-on-ubuntu-20-04
4. Installing Certbot according to the EFF https://certbot.eff.org/instructions?ws=nginx&os=ubuntufocal
5. Continue with https://plausible.io/docs/self-hosting#up-and-running

</details>

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