medley set up caddy

Caddy is a powerful, extensible platform to serve your sites, services, and apps. It is written in Go.
In addition to being a web server, I've used Caddy with a reverse proxy to Node to perform other web services.

Prior To Installing Caddy

log into the remote machine
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt autoclean
sudo apt autoremove
make sure your A and AAAA DNS records point to this machine

Install Caddy on Ubuntu

Note: for other operating systems, this page shows how to download and install Caddy.

sudo apt install -y debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring apt-transport-https
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/gpg.key' | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/caddy-stable-archive-keyring.gpg
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/caddy/stable/debian.deb.txt' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install caddy
sudo setcap CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE=+eip $(which caddy)

Run Caddy (even on reboot)

whereis caddy
sudo mv caddy /usr/bin/
caddy version # tests that it worked

Caddy may have created a user and group, but just in case:

sudo groupadd --system caddy

sudo useradd --system \
             --gid caddy \
             --create-home \
             --home-dir /var/lib/caddy \
             --shell /usr/sbin/nologin \
             --comment "Caddy web server" \
             caddy

Now create the webroot location and some web content:

sudo mkdir /var/www
sudo chown ubuntu:caddy /var/www
sudo mkdir /var/www/public
sudo chown ubuntu:caddy /var/www/public

create some HTML to show:
emacs /var/www/public/index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><title>Hello from Caddy!</title></head>
<body>
  <h1 style="font-family:arial; text-align:center;">
    This page is being served via Caddy
  </h1>
</body>
</html>

Download the systemd unit file from the Caddy GitHub and run systemctl:

sudo sh -c 'curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/caddyserver/dist/master/init/caddy.service > /etc/systemd/system/caddy.service'
more /etc/systemd/system/caddy.service # make sure ExecStart and ExecReload are correct
sudo systemctl daemon-reload # reload systemctl to detect the caddy service
sudo systemctl enable --now caddy # keep caddy running on a reboot
sudo systemctl status caddy # verify running

Set up the Caddyfile Config

Note that the filename is uppercase.

cd /etc/caddy
sudo mv Caddyfile CaddyfileOrig
sudo emacs Caddyfile
http:// { root * /var/www/public encode gzip file_server }

sudo caddy fmt --overwrite Caddyfile
sudo caddy validate
I've noticed that logs stop on a simple reload, so do a force stop/start of caddy:
sudo systemctl stop caddy
sudo systemctl restart caddy
sudo systemctl status caddy

You can visit your server’s IP in a web browser to see the page!

A More Detailed Caddyfile And Logging

To enable logging, set up the Caddyfile and create directories. Caddy does some nice things to format logs and keep them from filling up your file system.

Replace "exampleCom" with your domain name.

sudo mkdir /var/www/logs
sudo chown caddy /var/www/logs
sudo mkdir /var/www/logs/caddyLogs
sudo chown caddy /var/www/logs/caddyLogs
sudo mkdir /var/www/logs/exampleComLogs
sudo chown caddy /var/www/logs/exampleComLogs
sudo emacs /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
# @fileoverview: Caddyfile see also https://caddyserver.com/docs/caddyfile #global { # enable caddy server logs -- sudo chown caddy this log log { output file /var/www/logs/caddyLogs } } #:80 { #example.com { http:// { root * /var/www/public # set the web root path to your site's directory file_server # enable the static file server. encode gzip # enable compression # enable the site-specific logs -- sudo chown caddy this log log { output file /var/www/logs/exampleComLogs } handle_errors { # make all errors (404, etc) go to error.html rewrite * /error.html file_server } # reverse_proxy localhost:3334 # set up a reverse proxy # php_fastcgi localhost:9000 # serve a PHP site through php-fpm } # example of re-direction but cloudflare and caddy handle it #www.example.com { # redir https://example.com #}

sudo caddy fmt --overwrite Caddyfile
sudo caddy validate
I've noticed that logs stop on a simple reload, so do a force stop/start of caddy:
sudo systemctl stop caddy
sudo systemctl restart caddy
sudo systemctl status caddy
create /var/www/error.html

Of Note:

To read the logs: journalctl -u caddy --no-pager | less +G
The Caddy process will run as the caddy user, which has its $HOMEset to /var/lib/caddy
The default data storage location (for certificates and other state information) will be in /var/lib/caddy/.local/share/caddy
When Caddy runs as a service it runs as caddy user. It won't have permission to install its root CA certificate to the system trust store. To do this, run sudo caddy trust to install.

Caddy Paths

caddy executable: /usr/bin/caddy
caddy config file: /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
web pages: /var/www/public

Caddy Service Commands

caddy status: sudo systemctl status caddy
stop caddy: sudo systemctl stop caddy
restart caddy: sudo systemctl restart caddy
gracefully reload caddy: sudo systemctl reload caddy
see the caddy service config: more /etc/systemd/system/caddy.service

Uninstalling Caddy

sudo systemctl stop caddy
sudo systemctl disable --now caddy
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl reset-failed
systemctl cat service
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/caddy-stable.list
sudo apt remove caddy
sudo groupdel --system caddy
sudo killall -u caddy
sudo userdel -rf caddy

References