Deploy a Rust or Go binary to a VPS daemonized

Example deploying to a Digital Ocean linux droplet via email/password authentication and use the screen command to keep the service running as a daemon.

---

Assuming the binary is compiled to target/release/server and its statically linked (typical for Rust and Go projects), and you have the following ENV variables set:

• DROPLET_IP: the IP of your server
• DROPLET_USER: usually this is “root”
• DROPLET_PASSWORD: the users’ password

# Use sshpass to handle password prompt of ssh and scp
# Install sshpass if not already installed
if ! command -v sshpass &> /dev/null
then
    echo "sshpass could not be found"
    echo "Installing sshpass..."
    sudo apt-get install sshpass
fi

# SSH into the server and stop the daemonized tempest process
echo "stopping current server process"
sshpass -p $DROPLET_PASSWORD ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null $DROPLET_USER@$DROPLET_IP << EOF
    # Check if the tempest screen session is running
    if screen -list | grep -q "tempest"; then
        echo "Stopping tempest process..."
        # Send the command to terminate the screen session
        screen -S tempest -X quit
    else
        echo "No tempest process found"
    fi
EOF

# Transfer the binary to the droplet
echo "transfer binary to server"
sshpass -p $DROPLET_PASSWORD scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null target/release/server $DROPLET_USER@$DROPLET_IP:tempest

# SSH into the server and start the tempest binary as a monitored daemon process
echo "starting new server process"
sshpass -p $DROPLET_PASSWORD ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null $DROPLET_USER@$DROPLET_IP << EOF
    # Check if screen is installed, if not install it
    if ! command -v screen &> /dev/null
    then
        echo "screen could not be found"
        echo "Installing screen..."
        apt-get install screen
    fi

    # Start the tempest binary in a screen session
    screen -dmS tempest ./tempest
EOF

Note that this script uses the sshpass command available on Linux, so that it works directly from a github action.