First Deployment

A complete guide from zero to deployed application, including VPS setup.

Prerequisites

• A VPS with Ubuntu/Debian (fresh install recommended)
• SSH access as root
• A domain pointing to your VPS
• slipp installed locally

VPS Setup

No VPS yet?

slipp providers add gigahost + slipp provision myapp (or the combined slipp up myapp --domain ...) orders and bootstraps a VPS for you, replacing this whole section. See Provisioning a VPS with Gigahost.

1. SSH to your VPS as root

   ssh root@your-server-ip

2. Update system packages

   apt update && apt upgrade -y

3. Install required packages

   apt install -y python3 python3-pip docker.io docker-compose-v2
   systemctl enable --now docker

4. Create slipp service account

   From your local machine:

   slipp bootstrap account your-server-ip

   This creates a slipp user with:

   • SSH key access (copied from root)
   • Passwordless sudo
   • Verified connectivity

Generate Deployment

1. Navigate to your project

   cd your-project

2. Run launch

   slipp launch --name myapp

3. Answer the prompts

   • Host IP: Your VPS IP address
   • SSH User: slipp (created by bootstrap)
   • Domain: Your domain (e.g., app.example.com)

4. Review generated files

   • Directoryinventory/

     • hosts
     • Directoryhost_vars/

       • Directorymyserver/

         • vars.yml
         • vault.yml
   • Directorygroup_vars/

     • all.yml
   • Directoryroles/

     • Directorymyapp/

       • Directorytasks/

         • …
       • Directorytemplates/

         • …
   • playbook.yml
   • slipp.yaml
   • Dockerfile

Configure Secrets

1. Generate secrets for vault references

   slipp secrets sync inventory/host_vars/myserver/vars.yml

2. Encrypt the vault

   ansible-vault encrypt inventory/host_vars/myserver/vault.yml

   Choose a strong password and save it securely.

Deploy

1. Run deployment

   slipp deploy

   slipp launch generates a requirements.yml listing the Ansible collections your project needs, and slipp deploy installs them automatically before running the playbook — no manual ansible-galaxy step required.

   Enter your vault password when prompted.

   Every deploy restarts the service and verifies it’s active (systemctl is-active) before reporting success — a crash-looping service fails the deploy instead of silently reporting “success” with a dead process. For runtime: systemd deploys specifically, pass --health-check <path> to slipp launch to poll an HTTP endpoint after restart and automatically roll back to the previous deployment + unit file if it never comes up healthy.

2. Verify deployment

   slipp ps

   You should see your service running:

   name    project  host      state    uptime
   myapp   myapp    myserver  running  1m

Verify

Check logs

slipp logs myapp -f

Test the application

Open https://your-domain.com in a browser.

Debug issues

# Check container status
slipp exec "docker ps -a"

# Check container logs directly
slipp exec "docker logs myapp"

# SSH for deeper debugging
slipp ssh

Common Issues

Connection refused

Cause: SSH not configured correctly

Fix:

# Test SSH directly
ssh slipp@your-server-ip

# Re-run bootstrap if needed
slipp bootstrap account your-server-ip

Vault password incorrect

Cause: Wrong password or unencrypted vault

Fix:

# Check if vault is encrypted
file inventory/host_vars/myserver/vault.yml
# Should show: ASCII text

# Re-encrypt if needed
ansible-vault encrypt inventory/host_vars/myserver/vault.yml

Docker not found

Cause: Docker not installed on VPS

Fix:

# SSH to VPS
slipp ssh

# Install Docker
sudo apt install -y docker.io docker-compose-v2
sudo systemctl enable --now docker

Domain not resolving

Cause: DNS not configured

Fix:

1. Add A record pointing to your VPS IP
2. Wait for DNS propagation (up to 48 hours)
3. Test: dig your-domain.com

If your provider is configured with slipp providers add gigahost, slipp dns sync converges the zone + A record for you automatically.

VPS is unrecoverable

For Gigahost-provisioned servers, slipp server install <name_or_ip> wipes and reinstalls the OS, then re-bootstraps the slipp account. A previous install/bootstrap that got interrupted resumes automatically on re-run instead of prompting to wipe again.

What’s Next?

Now that your app is deployed:

• Local Development - Develop locally with remote infrastructure
• Secrets Management - Manage sensitive configuration
• Container Images - Push images without a registry

Redeployment

After making changes:

# Redeploy everything
slipp deploy

# Use tag preset for specific changes
slipp deploy restart

Create tag presets for common operations:

slipp tags add restart --tags restart
slipp tags add update --tags update-app