Setting up Dokku on Digital Ocean

This is notes from my first time using Digital Ocean. It is a pretty cool interface and it has a Dokku instance built in. But there were a couple additional steps to set it up, as well as one hiccup with SSH keys.

Create a droplet

My config options

DNS setup

you can either use a dedicated URL like this:

or if you want to dokku to create 4 level domains (don’t know if there’s a tech term) add the following entries to your already existing DNS zone file:

the second option would add a root url of darkmatter.example.com and an app named app1, would be deployed to: app1.darkmatter.example.com

Send your SSH key to dokku on your server

This sends your SSH key up to the dokku server so that you can git push to the server without typing in a password each time.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh root@darkmatter.example.com "sudo sshcommand acl-add dokku progrium"

Git set up for a demo app

cd app
git init
git commit -am "initial commit"
# git remote add dokku dokku@[your-domain-name]:[app-name]
git remote add dokku dokku@darkmatter.example.com:app1
git push dokku master

If no problems are encountered, then dokku will respond (on the command line) that

...
[lots of git messages]
...
-----> Releasing app1 ...
-----> Deploying app1 ...
=====> Application deployed:
       http://app1.darkmatter.example.com