Operations & Maintenance

Day-to-day commands for managing your deployment.

Verify auto-restart#

Docker's --restart unless-stopped handles container restarts. Ensure Docker itself starts on boot:

sudo systemctl enable docker

Reboot test#

sudo reboot
# wait 30 seconds, then SSH back in
docker ps                    # containers should be running
curl https://DOMAIN/         # app should respond

Redeploy (manual)#

Single container#

docker pull GHCR_IMAGE
docker stop CONTAINER_NAME && docker rm CONTAINER_NAME
docker run -d \
  --name CONTAINER_NAME \
  -p APP_PORT:APP_PORT \
  --env-file ~/app.env \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  GHCR_IMAGE

Docker Compose#

cd ~/app
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Redeploy script#

Create ~/redeploy.sh on your VPS for one-command redeployments:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
 
# ---- Configure these per project ----
IMAGE="ghcr.io/username/repo:latest"
CONTAINER="myapp"
ENV_FILE="$HOME/app.env"
PORT="8000"
HEALTH_ENDPOINT="/health"
# --------------------------------------
 
echo "=== Pulling latest image ==="
docker pull "$IMAGE"
 
echo "=== Stopping and removing old container ==="
docker stop "$CONTAINER" 2>/dev/null || true
docker rm "$CONTAINER" 2>/dev/null || true
 
echo "=== Starting new container ==="
docker run -d \
  --name "$CONTAINER" \
  -p "$PORT:$PORT" \
  --env-file "$ENV_FILE" \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  "$IMAGE"
 
echo "=== Waiting for app to start ==="
sleep 3
 
echo "=== Health check ==="
curl -sf http://localhost:$PORT$HEALTH_ENDPOINT && echo "" || echo "WARNING: Health check failed"
 
echo "=== Cleaning up old images ==="
docker image prune -af
 
echo "=== Done ==="
docker ps --filter "name=$CONTAINER"

Make it executable:

chmod +x ~/redeploy.sh

Docker Compose version#

#!/bin/bash
set -e
cd ~/app
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d
docker image prune -f
docker compose ps

Rollback to a specific SHA#

Images are tagged with sha- prefix by the CI workflow:

docker pull ghcr.io/username/repo:sha-abc1234
docker stop CONTAINER_NAME && docker rm CONTAINER_NAME
docker run -d \
  --name CONTAINER_NAME \
  -p APP_PORT:APP_PORT \
  --env-file ~/app.env \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/username/repo:sha-abc1234

Update env vars#

nano ~/app.env
# edit values, save
 
# Restart to pick up changes
docker restart CONTAINER_NAME
 
# Or for compose
cd ~/app && docker compose restart

View logs#

# Single container
docker logs CONTAINER_NAME
docker logs -f CONTAINER_NAME       # follow/tail
 
# Docker Compose
cd ~/app
docker compose logs
docker compose logs -f backend      # follow specific service

Nginx logs#

sudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.log
sudo tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.log

Clean up old images#

docker image prune -a

Renew SSL manually (usually not needed)#

sudo certbot renew