How to setup SSH in docker container.

In this article I will show you the steps for deploying a nodejs server which is on my local machine on a container which will act as a cloud machine (for ex. AWS EC2).

This can help you to understand how to setup an actual cloud deployment from the very basics.

These are the folllowing steps if you want to deploy a basic node application on a cloud service.

Prerequisite :

have linux
have docker installed
have node installed

Step 1 : Create a docker container using ubuntu:22.04 image

Start by pulling ubuntu:22.04 image and spinning up a container using this image :

sudo docker pull ubuntu:22.04
sudo docker run -it --name <server_name> ubuntu:22.04 /bin/bash

after running this command your terminal will turn into the container’s terminal and will look like this root@<container_id>:/

now update the container using this command :

apt update && apt upgrade -y
apt install sudo -y

Step 2 : Setting up SSH

In the Container :

First add a user admin

  adduser admin
  usermod -aG sudo admin

switch to admin user

  su - admin

Now lets setup SSH access

install openssh-server
```
   sudo apt install -y openssh-server
```
start the service
```
  sudo service ssh start
```
Now the SSH access has been setup and now we will generate a rsa key on the local machine and send that key to this container by its ip_address.

In the local machine :

Now open your local machine terminal and first get the ip_address of container :
```
  docker inspect <container_name>
```
Generate an SSH key
```
  ssh-keygen -t rsa
```

copy this to container

  ssh-copy-id admin@<container_ip_address>

Now you can successfully SSH into your container from your local machine :
```
  ssh admin@<container_ip_address>
```

Step 3 : Create simple nodejs server

In your local machine create an bun project

bun init

In the index.ts :

import express from "express";

const app = express();
const PORT = 3000;

app.get("/", (req, res) => {
  res.status(200).json({
    id: "1",
    name: "John Doe",
  });
});

app.listen(PORT, () => {
  console.log(`Server Running on Port : ${PORT}`);
});

run the server using :

bun run index.ts

Step 4 : Deploying the server to bare metal container

copy your server files to the container

scp -r /path/to/your/app admin@<container_ip>:/home/admin/app

check in the SSH’d terminal if the files are present

ls /home/admin/app

install Node in the container :

sudo apt update
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

check if node is installed

node --version
npm --version

install bun in the container

curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash

add bun to path

export BUN_INSTALL="$HOME/.bun"
export PATH="$BUN_INSTALL/bin:$PATH"

check if bun is installed

bun --version

run the server

bun run index.ts

Now on the browser go the domain http://<container_ip_address>:3000 you will see this :

{
    "id": "1",
    "name": "John Doe"
}

Server is successfully running on port 3000 in the container.

From Zero to Hero: Setting Up a Node.js server on a Bare-Metal Server