LedgerLine/docs/roadmap/phase-1.md

# Phase 1 — Deployment: Ledgerline on a server behind Traefik

*Part of `docs/roadmap/` — see [`intro.md`](intro.md) for platform/background context and [`summary.md`](summary.md) for how every phase fits together. Prev: [`phase-0.md`](phase-0.md) · Next: [`phase-2.md`](phase-2.md)*

**Status:** Done

**Message:** Ledgerline is running on a remote server and served over HTTPS at
**https://ledgerline.vione.cloud**. Verified against the live deployment, not
just the config: the frontend loads, `/api/health/all` reports every service
`ok`, and the origin serves a real Let's Encrypt certificate (valid until
2027-01-07, auto-renewed by Traefik).

- **Target:** the throwaway server `czy` (Ubuntu 24.04, 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM), repo
  at `/opt/apps/LedgerLine`. Docker 29.9 and Compose v5.6 installed from
  Docker's apt repo. A 2 GB swapfile was added (persisted in `/etc/fstab`) —
  nine containers do not fit in 1 GB of RAM without it, and steady state still
  uses roughly 700 MB plus swap.
- **How it's wired:** `docker-compose.traefik.yml` is an *override*, not an
  edit of `docker-compose.yml`, so local development is unchanged. It adds
  Traefik v3.6 on ports 80/443 (Docker provider, `exposedByDefault=false`,
  HTTP→HTTPS redirect, Let's Encrypt via HTTP-01), routes
  ``Host(`ledgerline.vione.cloud`)`` to the gateway on port 8000, and strips
  the published host ports from every other service (`ports: !reset []`) so
  Postgres, Redis and the services are reachable only on the Compose network.
- **No application or `tests/` changes.** The Dockerfile and base compose file
  are untouched; schema applied and data seeded on the server with the same
  steps as `make seed` (800 accounts, 250,000 transactions).
- **Deploy / redeploy command** (always both files — a bare `docker compose up`
  would use the base file alone and publish every port):

  ```bash
  docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.traefik.yml up -d --build
  ```

- **Cloudflare gotchas hit on the way:**
  - The first certificate attempt failed with an ACME 404 because the
    Cloudflare DNS record did not yet point at the server — a packet capture
    on the server showed no inbound traffic from Cloudflare at all. Traefik
    only retries issuance on restart, so after fixing the record it needed
    `docker compose ... restart traefik`.
  - With the orange-cloud proxy on, the SSL/TLS mode must be **Full** —
    **Flexible** combined with Traefik's HTTPS redirect causes a redirect loop.
- **Caveats to remember:** the deployment is public, including the
  `/api/admin/chaos` endpoints (anyone who finds them can flip flags);
  internet scanners probed the site within seconds of it going live. The
  server is disposable by design, and Traefik's state lives in the
  `letsencrypt` volume, which is lost on an OS reinstall (a new certificate is
  simply issued on the next run).

**Time-box:** 1 evening.

**Deliverable:** the unmodified-behaviour Ledgerline system reachable at a real
domain over HTTPS, reproducible with one compose command.

### Concepts

- **Traefik's model:** *entrypoints* (the ports it listens on), *routers*
  (rule → service), *services* (where to send traffic), *middlewares*, and
  *providers* (where config comes from — here, Docker labels on containers).
  Compare with nginx, where the same information lives in one static config
  file.
- **Compose override files.** `-f base -f override` merges the files;
  `!reset` clears an inherited key (here, `ports`) instead of appending to it.
- **ACME HTTP-01 behind a CDN.** Let's Encrypt must be able to reach port 80 on
  the *hostname's actual origin*. With Cloudflare proxying, that only works
  once the DNS record points at the right server.
- **Why this phase exists before observability.** The telemetry work in
  Phases 2–11 is more convincing when the system under observation is a real
  deployment rather than a laptop, and the platform (`observability-ansible`)
  is already a remote deployment — Ledgerline now sits on the same footing.

**Done when:** `https://ledgerline.vione.cloud` shows the frontend with a valid
certificate; `/api/health/all` is all `ok`; only ports 22, 80 and 443 are
reachable on the server; and the deploy is one documented compose command.