Environments stop being machines. Until now each box WAS an environment --
"beta" named both a deploy target and a host, "the desktop" named both the
operator's computer and the dev server -- so every path could assume one
environment per host and hardcode /opt/thermograph, /etc/thermograph.env and
ports 8137/8080. That assumption ends here:
vps1 75.119.132.91 Forgejo, Grafana/Loki, the portfolio site, and DEV
(own Postgres, mesh-only on 10.10.0.2:8137)
vps2 169.58.46.181 PROD and BETA as two Swarm stacks sharing one
TimescaleDB instance, plus Centralis, Postfix, backups
desktop AI model hosting + flex Swarm capacity, no environment
Nothing live has moved; the ordered cutover is in
infra/deploy/RUNBOOK-vps1-vps2-cutover.md.
deploy/env-topology.sh is the single source of truth: env -> host, checkout,
branch, deploy mode, stack name, env file, LB ports, DB role/database, service
prefix. THERMOGRAPH_ENV is the input, and on vps2 it is the only thing
distinguishing a beta deploy from a prod one -- deploy.sh refuses to run when it
disagrees with the checkout it was invoked from. The host-wide secrets-env and
deploy-mode markers survive only as a fallback for a single-environment box.
Beta gets its own stack file rather than an overlay (a merge cannot REMOVE the
db service, and beta having no database of its own is the point). Its services
are prefixed beta-*: Swarm registers a service's short name as a DNS alias on
every network it joins, so two stacks both calling a service `web` on the shared
data network would let prod's frontend resolve a beta task. Prod's stack, env
and LB config are untouched.
One Postgres, two databases with two roles: deploy/db/provision-env-db.sh
creates thermograph_beta (NOSUPERUSER, owns only its own database, CONNECT
revoked from PUBLIC) plus a <role>_ro for ad-hoc queries, and refuses to run for
the environment that owns the instance -- doing so would demote prod's bootstrap
superuser.
Fixes that co-residency would otherwise have broken silently:
- CI secrets are keyed by host (VPS1_SSH_*, VPS2_SSH_*). SSH_* meant "beta" and
also "the Forgejo box" because those shared a machine; that conflation is what
once had the prod backup dumping beta.
- The nightly backup dumps BOTH application databases to separate off-box
prefixes, and fails loudly on a missing one instead of skipping it.
- Alloy stopped deriving the `host` label from the node -- on vps2 that would
have filed every beta line as prod, feeding prod's alert rules with beta's
traffic. It is now derived per source, with a new `node` label for the machine,
and beta's log volume is mounted via a vps2-only overlay.
- ops/dbq.sh, ops/iceberg.sh and the secrets seed scripts derived their SSH
target and env-file path from the topology instead of hardcoding beta to
75.119.132.91 -- which is vps1's address now.
- Dev's overlay binds DEV_BIND_ADDR (loopback by default, the mesh address on
vps1) instead of 0.0.0.0: correct for a home LAN box, a public exposure of
unreviewed branches on a VPS.
Terraform's hosts variable is keyed by machine with a nested environments map,
and main.tf flattens (host, environment) pairs so two environments on one box
cannot share a checkout. Caddy's single reference config is split per host.
Docs, onboarding and the runbooks are updated throughout, including the security
rationales that co-residency makes false: separate SSH credentials no longer put
a host boundary between beta and prod, and the boundary that remains is the
database and the filesystem.
29 KiB
Deploying Thermograph to prod (and beta) on vps2
Prod and beta both run as Docker Swarm stacks on vps2 (
169.58.46.181, mesh10.10.0.1) — two separate stacks, two separate checkouts (/opt/thermographand/opt/thermograph-beta), sharing one host because a beta green light is meant to be evidence about prod (same orchestrator, same Postgres build, same Caddy, same mesh position).deploy/env-topology.shis the single source of truth for which environment lives where; every path below sources it rather than hardcoding a path or a port. The manual walkthrough below (provision.sh,thermograph.service, the venv) is legacy — kept as a from-scratch, no-orchestrator reference; prod and beta's actual process model is a Swarm stack (deploy/stack/), and dev's is plain compose on vps1 (seeDEPLOY-DEV.md), so the systemd/venv specifics below no longer match how any live environment actually runs.
Pipeline, both environments: push to main (beta) or release (prod) on
Forgejo → build-push.yml builds + pushes the image, tagged by SHA → the
single Deploy workflow (.forgejo/workflows/deploy.yml) SSHes into vps2
with THERMOGRAPH_ENV=beta or THERMOGRAPH_ENV=prod → deploy/deploy.sh
resolves the right checkout/branch/stack from env-topology.sh, git resets
it, renders that environment's secrets, and execs deploy/stack/deploy-stack.sh
(schema migration runs as a one-shot task before the roll) → each environment's
own loopback Caddy LB fronts it with TLS. Credentials are keyed by host
(VPS2_SSH_*), not by environment — vps2 answers to both prod and beta, so the
environment is passed as data (THERMOGRAPH_ENV), not baked into which secret
is used. (GitHub is retired/archived — Forgejo, self-hosted at
git.thermograph.org on vps1 over the WireGuard mesh, is now the sole git
host and CI.)
Files that make this work:
| File | Where it lives on vps2 | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
.forgejo/workflows/deploy.yml |
Forgejo | CI job that SSHes in and runs the deploy script, for all three environments |
.forgejo/workflows/build-push.yml |
Forgejo | builds + pushes the SHA-tagged image deploy.sh pulls |
deploy/env-topology.sh |
/opt/thermograph{,-beta}/infra/deploy/env-topology.sh |
resolves THERMOGRAPH_ENV to a checkout, branch, stack name, ports, DB role |
deploy/deploy.sh |
/opt/thermograph{,-beta}/infra/deploy/deploy.sh |
git reset + render secrets + routes to the Swarm-stack deploy |
deploy/stack/thermograph-stack.yml / thermograph-beta-stack.yml |
same | prod's / beta's Swarm stack (db, web, worker, lake, daemon, frontend; beta has no db of its own) |
deploy/thermograph.env.example |
/etc/thermograph.env (prod) / /etc/thermograph-beta.env (beta) |
Postgres password, VAPID/auth secrets, WORKERS, sizing, base path |
deploy/stack/lb/Caddyfile / Caddyfile.beta |
each stack's loopback LB container | reverse proxy from the host's real Caddy into the Swarm overlay |
terraform/ |
run from your machine | provisions the box (host-level only; does not know about the two-environment split — see ACCESS.md) |
deploy/provision.sh, deploy/thermograph.service |
(legacy) | pre-compose venv+systemd bootstrap — superseded by the Swarm stack |
Each app serves on loopback only (prod 127.0.0.1:8137/:8080, beta
127.0.0.1:8237/:8180); the host's real Caddy is the only thing exposed to
the internet (ports 80/443), reverse-proxying into whichever loopback LB
matches the domain requested. Each environment's own checkout keeps its own
gitignored cache under data/cache/, so a git pull in one never touches the
other's.
Any deploy host needs a /etc/hosts entry for the registry.
git.thermograph.org's public DNS resolves to vps1's public IP, and
vps1's own Caddy rejects /v2/* (the registry API) from anything outside the
WireGuard mesh (10.10.0.0/24) — confirmed live: docker login/pull from
vps2 failed with a 403 until adding 10.10.0.2 git.thermograph.org to
/etc/hosts (10.10.0.2 is vps1's mesh IP; every deploy host is already on
the mesh, this is purely a DNS-routing gap, not a connectivity one). vps1
itself doesn't need this — it's the box Forgejo runs on, so git.thermograph.org
just resolves to itself either way. build-push.yml's own header comment
documents the same requirement for the CI runner host.
Current production layout: prod's Caddy config owns thermograph.org
at its root (THERMOGRAPH_BASE=/, so uvicorn serves /, /calendar,
/api/v2/… with no prefix) and beta's owns beta.thermograph.org the same
way. emigriffith.dev is a separate static portfolio site, served from
vps1, not vps2 — it shares no host, checkout or Caddy config with either
app environment. emigriffith.dev/thermograph* permanently redirects to
thermograph.org (prefix stripped).
Note:
deploy.sh(the CI deploy) only pulls code, reinstalls deps, and restarts the app service — it does not touch Caddy or/etc/thermograph.env. After changingdeploy/Caddyfileor the env, copy it onto the VPS and reload Caddy / restart the service by hand (see Part 2 step 4 and Part 3).
Part 1 — Keys: how to manage them
You need two separate SSH keypairs. Don't reuse one for both.
Key A — your login key (you ↔ VPS), you probably already have this
This is how you SSH in to run provision.sh. Nothing to set up here beyond
your existing access.
Key B — the CI deploy key (Forgejo Actions ↔ VPS), you create this
A dedicated key whose private half lives in a Forgejo Actions secret and
whose public half is authorized on the VPS's deploy user. It should only
be able to log in as deploy and run the deploy script.
Generate it on your machine (no passphrase — CI can't type one):
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "thermograph-ci" -f ~/.ssh/thermograph_ci -N ""
That makes two files:
~/.ssh/thermograph_ci→ private key → goes into the Forgejo Actions secretSSH_KEY~/.ssh/thermograph_ci.pub→ public key → goes on the VPS
Install the public key on the VPS (as the deploy user):
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/thermograph_ci.pub deploy@YOUR_VPS_IP
# or manually: append the .pub line to /home/deploy/.ssh/authorized_keys
Put the private key into Forgejo → repo Settings → Actions → Secrets → Add Secret. Set all of these:
| Secret | Value |
|---|---|
SSH_KEY |
full contents of ~/.ssh/thermograph_ci (the private key, incl. BEGIN/END lines) |
SSH_HOST |
VPS IP or hostname |
SSH_USER |
deploy |
SSH_PORT |
22 (or your custom SSH port) |
No tea CLI is installed for a command-line alternative; use the web UI, or
the REST API with a personal access token:
POST /api/v1/repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/secrets/{name} (body {"data": "..."}).
Why I can't do this for you: Forgejo secrets are write-only and require
your Forgejo auth; the VPS's authorized_keys requires your SSH access. Both
are credentials only you should hold.
Deploy key for cloning a private repo (optional)
If the Forgejo repo is private, the VPS also needs to pull from it. Two options:
- Make
provision.sh'sREPO_URLan HTTPS URL with an embedded personal access token (what the live VPS checkout actually uses today — see itsoriginremote), or - Add the
deployuser's own key (ssh-keygenon the VPS) as a read-only Deploy Key in the repo (Settings → Deploy keys). This is separate from Key B.
If the repo is public, skip this — git pull needs no auth.
Part 2 — Install (once, on the VPS)
-
Create the Forgejo repo and push (this project isn't versioned yet):
cd ~/Code/Thermograph git init && git add -A && git commit -m "Initial commit" # create an empty private repo on the Forgejo instance first (web UI or # POST /api/v1/user/repos), then: git remote add origin https://<forgejo-host>/OWNER/thermograph.git git push -u origin main -
Point DNS for each domain you serve (
thermograph.orgfor the app,emigriffith.devfor the portfolio) at the VPS IP with anArecord. Let's Encrypt won't issue a cert until the name resolves to the box. -
Provision the box. Copy
deploy/provision.shover (or clone the repo) and editREPO_URLat the top, then:REPO_URL="https://<forgejo-host>/OWNER/thermograph.git" bash deploy/provision.shIt installs Python + git + Caddy, creates the
deployuser, clones to/opt/thermograph, installs the systemd unit + env file, grants the deploy user a password-lesssystemctl restart thermograph(so CI can restart it), and starts the service. -
Install the Caddy config and reload.
deploy/Caddyfilealready carries the real domains (thermograph.org+emigriffith.dev); edit them if yours differ, then copy it into place, validate, and reload:sudo cp /opt/thermograph/deploy/Caddyfile /etc/caddy/Caddyfile sudo caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile # syntax check before reload sudo systemctl reload caddy # Caddy fetches each domain's TLS cert automaticallyDo this again any time
deploy/Caddyfilechanges — the CI deploy does not ship it. Set the app's base path to match in/etc/thermograph.env(THERMOGRAPH_BASE=/for the app-at-root layout), thensudo systemctl restart thermograph. -
Install Key B (Part 1) so CI can log in.
-
Verify: open
https://YOUR_DOMAIN/— you should get a clean padlock.
Part 3 — Day-to-day
- Deploy: just
git pushtomain. Actions runsdeploy.shand health-checks the service. Watch it under the repo's Actions tab on Forgejo (or query/api/v1/repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/tasks). - Manual deploy / rollback:
ssh deploy@vps '/opt/thermograph/deploy/deploy.sh'(setBRANCH=or check out a tag first to roll back). - Logs:
journalctl -u thermograph -f(app),/var/log/caddy/thermograph.log(proxy). - Restart:
sudo systemctl restart thermograph. - Change port / base path: edit
/etc/thermograph.env, thensudo systemctl restart thermograph. Changing the base path usually pairs with a Caddy change (proxy target / redirects) — update/etc/caddy/Caddyfileand reload Caddy too. - Change routing / domains: edit
/etc/caddy/Caddyfile(or copy the repo's),sudo caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile, thensudo systemctl reload caddy. The CI deploy never ships the Caddyfile, so this is always by hand.
Security notes
- App is bound to
127.0.0.1— not reachable except through Caddy. - Firewall: allow only
22,80,443(e.g.ufw allow 22,80,443/tcp). - The CI sudoers rule is scoped to exactly
systemctl restart/status thermograph. - Rotate Key B by regenerating it and updating the
SSH_KEYsecret +authorized_keys.
Accounts & notifications
Accounts, subscriptions, and notifications are authoritative and not
regenerable — back them up. Prod, beta and dev all keep them in
Postgres/TimescaleDB — prod and beta on the one shared instance on vps2 (as
the thermograph and thermograph_beta databases, separate roles, CONNECT
revoked from PUBLIC — see deploy/db/provision-env-db.sh), dev in its own
db container on vps1. SQLite (data/accounts.sqlite) is only a fallback for
running the app outside any of these stacks (a bare venv, the test suite)
when THERMOGRAPH_DATABASE_URL isn't a Postgres URL — it's not what any live
environment actually uses.
- Back up the Postgres data (e.g.
pg_dumpthe relevant database) as part of each environment's backup routine — losing it wipes all accounts and alerts for that environment. (Only a bare-venv/offline run backs updata/accounts.sqliteand its-wal/-shmsidecars instead.) - Multiple workers, one notifier (leader election). Each environment runs
several uvicorn workers (
WORKERS, sized per environment — seedeploy/secrets/{prod,beta,dev}.yamland each stack file's replica/worker counts). The subscription evaluator and the recurring scheduler must run in exactly one, so the workers elect a single leader — a host-localflock(THERMOGRAPH_SINGLETON_LOCK, set by the compose/stack app service to/app/data/notifier.lock), or a cluster-wide Postgres advisory lock (THERMOGRAPH_SINGLETON_PG=1) if the notifier must be single across replicas on multiple hosts — this is what prod's Swarm stack uses, sincewebscales to N replicas under the autoscaler. Seebackend/core/singleton.py.THERMOGRAPH_ROLE(web/worker/all, defaultall) further restricts which processes may own it, so a stateless web tier can scale without scaling notifiers. - Env vars (all optional, sensible defaults):
THERMOGRAPH_COOKIE_SECURE— set to1when serving over HTTPS (the VPS/TLS deploy) so the session cookie isSecure. Leave unset for plain-HTTP LAN, where aSecurecookie would never be sent.THERMOGRAPH_SESSION_TTL_DAYS— login/cookie lifetime (default 30).THERMOGRAPH_NOTIFY_INTERVAL— seconds between evaluation passes (default 900).THERMOGRAPH_NOTIFY_ARCHIVE_FETCHES— max missing-archive fetches per pass (default 4). A newly-subscribed cell with no cached ~45-year archive is fetched once (then only read); this caps how many such fetches one pass may do so a burst of new subscriptions can't exhaust the archive quota.THERMOGRAPH_ENABLE_NOTIFIER— set to0to disable the background evaluator.THERMOGRAPH_AUTH_SECRET— signing secret for (future) email reset/verify tokens; unused today, a per-boot random value is used if unset.
Web Push (VAPID)
Push notifications are signed with a VAPID keypair. If THERMOGRAPH_VAPID_PRIVATE_KEY
/ THERMOGRAPH_VAPID_PUBLIC_KEY are unset, the app generates a pair into
data/vapid.json on first run. That's fine only if the file persists — the
key the browser subscribed with must keep matching the key the server signs with. If
the keys ever change (regenerated data/vapid.json, a non-persistent data dir), every
existing subscription silently stops delivering: the push service returns 401/403 and
the app records it (logs/errors/*.jsonl, tagged "phase":"push") but the /push/test
call still returns 202 with sent:0, failed:N. To be safe, pin the keys in
/etc/thermograph.env (see deploy/thermograph.env.example for the generate command).
After changing keys, users must toggle alerts off/on to re-subscribe.
Diagnose a "test says sent but nothing arrives": check the /push/test response
(failed:N ⇒ delivery rejected) or tail logs/errors/*.jsonl | grep push, and
docker compose logs backend | grep -i push for the exact status code.
Homepage "unusual right now" feed
backend/api/homepage.py sweeps the tracked cities, grades each one's latest
observation from the parquet cache, and writes the ranked result to
data/homepage.json for the homepage template. It runs on the notifier's timer
(hourly guard) and at the tail of warm_cities.py, so a deploy repopulates it.
It spends a small amount of forecast quota, and has to. Nothing else keeps
the recent/forecast cache current for the tracked cities: warm_cities.py skips
any city whose archive is already cached, so it never re-fetches their forecast
bundle, and the notifier only touches cells somebody has subscribed to. Reading
that cache without refreshing it made the strip present days-old readings as
"right now". Each pass therefore tops up the stalest cells first, capped:
THERMOGRAPH_HOMEPAGE_REFRESH— recent/forecast fetches per pass (default 40, one per cell). At the hourly cadence that is ~960/day. Set0to disable, in which case the strip only ranks cities something else happened to refresh.THERMOGRAPH_HOMEPAGE_CITIES— how many cities the strip ranks over (default 250). The strip shows ~12 cards; ranking over a smaller set that is genuinely fresh beats ranking over every cached city when most of those are stale.
Readings older than a day are dropped rather than ranked, so an empty strip means the cache went cold — not that the weather is unremarkable.
Outbound email
The app never talks to a mail provider directly. It speaks plain SMTP to
Postfix running as a send-only null client on 127.0.0.1:25
(deploy/provision-mail.sh, run once as root). backend/mailer.py is the only
code that sends, over stdlib smtplib — no new dependency.
Why route through a local MTA rather than a provider's API:
- Delivery policy stays swappable. Direct-to-MX or relayed through a transactional provider is a Postfix setting; the app's config is just "localhost:25" either way, so switching needs no code change or redeploy.
- Postfix queues and retries. A handler hands the message off in microseconds; a slow or briefly-down upstream can't stall a request or lose a signup.
- Nothing new is exposed.
inet_interfaces = loopback-only, so the box accepts mail from itself and nothing else. A loopback socket is not a filesystem write, so the hardened unit (ProtectSystem=full,ReadWritePaths=…) needs no change.
Default is safe: THERMOGRAPH_MAIL_BACKEND defaults to console — it logs
the message and sends nothing — so dev and the test suite exercise the whole
signup path with no mail server and no risk of mailing a real person. Prod
opts in with =smtp; beta stays on console too (see
deploy/stack/thermograph-beta-stack.yml's header for why beta must never
hold live mail or Discord credentials).
Postfix unit topology — and the check that lies
Debian/Ubuntu ships Postfix as three systemd units, and only one of them does anything:
| Unit | What it is | Does it bind sockets? |
|---|---|---|
postfix.service |
umbrella wrapper: Type=oneshot, ExecStart=/bin/true, RemainAfterExit=yes |
No. Reports active (exited) forever. |
postfix@.service |
the template all instances are built from | n/a |
postfix@-.service |
the instance for /etc/postfix — the real MTA |
Yes. This is the one that matters. |
systemctl is-active postfixis not a health check. It returnedactivefor the entire 13-hour mail outage of 2026-07-24 whilepostfix@-.servicewasfailedand nothing was listening on:25. Reproduced deliberately during supervision testing: with the instance infailedand zero listeners,is-active postfixstill saidactive. Always querypostfix@-.service.
Two consequences worth internalising:
- Restart the instance (
systemctl restart 'postfix@-'), not the umbrella, for amain.cfchange to take effect. - Postfix's own tools lie in the one state you most need to detect. Any
command that resolves
inet_interfaces—postmulti,postqueue,postfix— fatals when one of the listed addresses is missing from the host. A checker built on them returns empty and reads as "nothing wrong". Use plainpostconf -c /etc/postfix -h inet_interfaces, which only readsmain.cf.
Supervision (deploy/provision-mail-supervision.sh)
Installed by provision-mail.sh, and safe to run on its own — it touches
nothing in main.cf. Everything it writes lives outside /opt/thermograph, so
deploy.sh's git reset --hard cannot erase it; re-running the script is what
makes a rebuilt box match.
- Drop-in
/etc/systemd/system/postfix@.service.d/10-wait-for-interfaces.conf(a drop-in, never an edit to the packaged unit, which apt replaces): orders PostfixAfter=docker.service wg-quick@wg0.service, addsRestart=on-failure/RestartSec=15s, and bounds retries atStartLimitBurst=5/StartLimitIntervalSec=600. - Start gate
/usr/local/sbin/postfix-wait-interfaces— anExecStartPrethat blocks (≤60s) until every address ininet_interfacesactually exists. Ordering makes the boot race unlikely; this makes it deterministic, and it is what makes a bounded start limit safe: a late interface costs seconds inside one attempt instead of burning the retry budget. - Health check
/usr/local/sbin/postfix-health— the single definition of "mail works" (see below). - Watchdog
/usr/local/sbin/postfix-watchdog+postfix-watchdog.timer— every 5 minutes.Restart=gives up after 5 attempts by design, so that a genuinely broken config lands infailedloudly instead of re-fataling every 15s forever; the watchdog is what stops "failed" meaning "dead until a human notices". It runsreset-failed(clearing the start-limit counter, which otherwise makes plainsystemctl startrefuse) and retries, forever, at a cadence 20× slower thanRestartSec. Net effect: bounded fast retry for transients, slow unbounded retry for everything else, worst-case recovery ~5 minutes instead of 13 hours.
sudo touch /etc/postfix/maintenance stops the watchdog fighting a deliberate
systemctl stop postfix@-. Remove it when done.
Monitoring specification
For the Grafana/Discord alerting and any future mail_health tool. Alerts must
not route over this box's own SMTP — prod's MTA cannot be the transport for
"prod's MTA is down".
postfix-health is the contract. Exit 0 healthy, 1 unhealthy, and one
logfmt line on stdout (LogQL: | logfmt):
mail_health status=ok unit=postfix@-.service unit_state=active bound=3/3 \
banner=ok queue=2 queue_real=0 oldest_deferred_s=0 reason=none
It asserts, in order: the instance unit is active; every address in
inet_interfaces is really bound on :25; none of them is missing from the
host (the latent state that stays invisible until the next reboot and then
kills all mail); a live 220 greeting comes back, not merely an open socket;
no public address is bound; and queue depth/age with null-sender bounces
excluded (they are undeliverable by design — this host accepts no inbound mail —
and would otherwise hold an alert open forever).
Alert on:
| Severity | Condition | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Page | mail_health status=fail twice consecutively (≥10 min) |
mail is down |
| Page | any postfix_watchdog action=RECOVERY_FAILED |
self-heal exhausted |
| Page | no postfix_watchdog line at all for 15 min |
see below |
| Warn | status=fail where reason contains only address-missing-from-host |
still serving, but the next reboot kills all mail |
| Warn | queue_real > 0 and oldest_deferred_s > 3600 |
mail accepted but not leaving |
The heartbeat-absence rule is the one that is easy to leave out and the one that would have caught this outage. Every other check is an active probe and therefore only reports while something is alive to run it; a dead box, dead timer, or dead log shipper produces silence, and silence renders identically to health on a dashboard. Alert on the absence of the 5-minute heartbeat, or the monitoring inherits the same blind spot the umbrella unit had.
Blocker for the alerting agent: none of this reaches Loki today. Alloy ships Docker container stdout, Caddy files and the app's JSONL — not the systemd journal — and Postfix runs on the host. Until
observability/alloy/config.alloygains aloki.source.journal(plus/var/log/journaland/etc/machine-idmounted read-only inalloy/docker-compose.agent.yml), no Postfix or watchdog line is queryable and none of the rules above can fire. That change is untested — validate it before relying on it. Until then the check is still reachable synchronously via Centralisrun_on_hostrunningpostfix-health, which is also the natural implementation of amail_healthtool.
Deliverability (do this before mailing real subscribers)
Mail from a bare VPS IP is very often junked no matter how Postfix is configured, because the IP has no sending reputation. Either:
- Relay through a provider (recommended) —
RELAYHOST+ credentials inprovision-mail.sh. They handle SPF/DKIM alignment and reputation. - Direct to MX — then you own the DNS work: an SPF TXT record, DKIM
(opendkim) with the public key published, a DMARC TXT record, and a
PTR / reverse-DNS record on the VPS IP pointing at
mail.thermograph.org. Missing rDNS alone is enough for Gmail and Outlook to junk everything.
Check placement with https://www.mail-tester.com, which scores all four at once.
- Env vars (all in
deploy/thermograph.env.example):THERMOGRAPH_MAIL_BACKEND(console|smtp|disabled),THERMOGRAPH_SMTP_HOST/_PORT/_USER/_PASSWORD/_STARTTLS,THERMOGRAPH_MAIL_FROM,THERMOGRAPH_MAIL_REPLY_TO. THERMOGRAPH_AUTH_SECRETmust be set to a fixed value before any confirmation or password-reset link is mailed. It currently defaults to a per-boot random value, so every outstanding link would break on restart.- Digest signups land in the
pending_digesttable in the accounts DB (Postgres on every environment; authoritative, back it up). The form ships ahead of delivery on purpose: addresses are collected now and confirmed once SMTP is live. - Logs:
journalctl -u postfix -f; queue withmailq.
SEO content pages
Crawlable, server-rendered pages (Jinja2) sit alongside the interactive tool and
link into it: /climate (hub), /climate/<slug> (per-city), /climate/<slug>/<month>,
/climate/<slug>/records, /glossary, /about, plus /robots.txt and
/sitemap.xml. The routable city set is backend/cities.json (~1000 metros: top
~500 global + ~250 core-English + ~250 extended-English/high-proficiency),
regenerated with python gen_cities.py [n_global] [n_english] [n_extended].
-
A values filter in
gen_cities.pydrops cities in countries that criminalize LGBTQ+ people (plus China/Pakistan/Indonesia by choice) viaEXCLUDE_CC, except a hand-kept list of notable/tourist/high-English hubs inKEEP_SLUGS(Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, Dubai, KL, Shanghai×5-from-China, Karachi, Jakarta, …). Excluded slots are backfilled from the next-ranked non-excluded cities, so the total stays ~1000. Edit either set and regenerate to change the policy. -
Per-city blurbs live in
backend/cities_flavor.json(a short Wikipedia summary per city, CC BY-SA, attributed on the page).python gen_flavor.pyfetches Wikipedia's free REST summary API and validates each match by coordinates; it's incremental by default (only fetches cities missing a blurb, and prunes ones no longer in cities.json) — pass--fullto rebuild. ~94% of cities get a blurb; the rest render without one. -
Notable weather events are a small hand-curated list in
backend/city_events.py({slug: {text, url}}) — one verified iconic event per city (Katrina/New Orleans, Harvey/Houston, the 1952 Great Smog/London, …). Auto-sourcing these from search proved unreliable (wrong matches), so they're edited by hand; a city not in the list simply shows its flavor blurb. Add entries freely — a test checks the slugs are valid. -
Archive warming runs automatically on every deploy of prod and dev — not beta.
deploy/stack/deploy-stack.sh(prod) anddeploy.sh's compose path (dev, viadeploy-dev.sh) launchwarm_cities.pydetached in the background after the health check, so the ~750 city pages serve from cache and a crawl can't burst the archive API quota. Beta deliberately skips this (TG_POST_DEPLOY=0inenv-topology.sh) — it would spend the shared upstream archive quota filling a cache only a rehearsal environment reads. Warming is idempotent (skips already-cached cells), so only the first deploy does the full ~25-min warm; later deploys just top up new cities. A page also self-heals (fetches its archive once) if hit before warming finishes. To run it by hand:cd backend && python warm_cities.py --pace 2. Logs land atlogs/warm-cities.loginside each environment's own backend container (dev is a normal container stack on vps1 now, not a bare systemd unit; there's nojournalctl --userpath any more). -
Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console:
https://thermograph.org/sitemap.xml. -
jinja2is a new dependency (already inrequirements.txt).
Monitoring
Fleet-wide logs and dashboards live in a separate project — a central
Grafana + Loki stack, hosted on vps1 alongside Forgejo, fed by a Grafana
Alloy agent on every node over the WireGuard mesh (thermograph-observability
on Forgejo; UI at https://dashboard.thermograph.org, Google SSO). It
ingests every container's stdout, Caddy's access logs, and the app's
structured JSON logs (logs/{errors,access,audit}/*.jsonl) — from prod and
beta on vps2 as well as dev on vps1, each distinguishable by its host/service
labels. This replaced the old SSH-tailed scripts/dashboard.py.
The app still exposes raw counters at the gated GET /api/v2/metrics route
(loopback-only; refuses any request carrying a proxy X-Forwarded-* header, so
it's never reachable through Caddy). It reports inbound requests per endpoint,
outbound calls per upstream source, and background-daemon heartbeats
(e.g. the subscription notifier). Read it over an SSH tunnel with
THERMOGRAPH_METRICS_TOKEN (set in /etc/thermograph.env) as the token=
query param — handy for a quick check without opening Grafana.