Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7

scottalanmiller

Postcards is an SMS / Texting application for connecting to Skyetel VoIP trunks. It's open source, free, and provides a web interface that you can use to send and receive SMS messages. Installation is interactive, so it cannot easily be scripted, but only the "run" step is interactive. Otherwise, it is all scriptable.

yum -y install epel-release
yum -y install net-tool
mkdir -p /opt/postcards
fallocate -l 4G /swapfile && chmod 600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile  && echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab
curl https://bitbucket.org/skyetel/postcards-installer/get/master.tar.gz | tar xvz --strip 1 -C /opt/postcards
cd /opt/postcards
./run.sh
systemctl enable docker

With this installation it installs Docker, sets up the swap space, configures Postcards, and even configures a web proxy and sets up a LetsEncrypt SSL certificate for you. This works on cloud or your own infrastructure.

Note: Tested with Scale HC3 and Vultr 2GB Instance

JasGot

@scottalanmiller Works ok with 2GB? I remember someone saying it really needs 4gb.

scottalanmiller

@JasGot said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@scottalanmiller Works ok with 2GB? I remember someone saying it really needs 4gb.

Perfectly fine in 2GB. Going to test 1GB soon. Only using 480MB according to free.

Skyetel

@scottalanmiller said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@JasGot said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@scottalanmiller Works ok with 2GB? I remember someone saying it really needs 4gb.

Perfectly fine in 2GB. Going to test 1GB soon. Only using 480MB according to free.

It takes 2GB to build, but then its very lightweight. 4GB is recommended if you are have other things running on the server that is hosting Postcards.

scottalanmiller

@Skyetel said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@scottalanmiller said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@JasGot said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@scottalanmiller Works ok with 2GB? I remember someone saying it really needs 4gb.

Perfectly fine in 2GB. Going to test 1GB soon. Only using 480MB according to free.

It takes 2GB to build, but then its very lightweight. 4GB is recommended if you are have other things running on the server that is hosting Postcards.

Would be great if it was pre-compiled, having to allocate resources for the build that aren't needed operationally is a pain.

Seems like pre-compiling shouldn't be too hard.

black3dynamite

Still preferred fallocate instead of dd to create a swap file?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=4096 bs=1MiB && chmod 600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile && echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab

scottalanmiller

@black3dynamite said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

Still preferred fallocate instead of dd to create a swap file?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=4096 bs=1MiB && chmod 600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile && echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab

Six of one....

marcinozga

@black3dynamite said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

Still preferred fallocate instead of dd to create a swap file?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=4096 bs=1MiB && chmod 600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile && echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab

Still using swap file? Memory is cheap. I don't recall a server where I created swap partition or swap file.

scottalanmiller

@marcinozga said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@black3dynamite said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:
Still preferred fallocate instead of dd to create a swap file?
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=4096 bs=1MiB && chmod 600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile && echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab
Still using swap file? Memory is cheap. I don't recall a server where I created swap partition or swap file.

Memory is NOT cheap, not at all. Getting 4GB of RAM would be $10-$15/mo more on the most cost effective cloud providers. That adds up, fast, if you start doing it for all of your services. It's easily as much as a 400% cost increase.

Especially when memory serves no production function and this is only because you need extra RAM during the installation phase! Paying $180/year extra for no benefit whatsoever is a lot to anyone.

scottalanmiller

You typically keep swap as a buffer against accidents. But if you want, you can simply remove it after the install is over.

marcinozga

@scottalanmiller said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@marcinozga said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:
@black3dynamite said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:
Still preferred fallocate instead of dd to create a swap file?
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=4096 bs=1MiB && chmod 600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile && echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab
Still using swap file? Memory is cheap. I don't recall a server where I created swap partition or swap file.
Memory is NOT cheap, not at all.

It is if you own it. If you rent your hardware, yeah, it adds up.

scottalanmiller

@marcinozga said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:

@scottalanmiller said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:
@marcinozga said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:
@black3dynamite said in Install Skyetel Postcards on CentOS 7:
Still preferred fallocate instead of dd to create a swap file?
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=4096 bs=1MiB && chmod 600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile && echo "/swapfile swap swap defaults 0 0">>/etc/fstab
Still using swap file? Memory is cheap. I don't recall a server where I created swap partition or swap file.
Memory is NOT cheap, not at all.
It is if you own it. If you rent your hardware, yeah, it adds up.

Even if I own it, throwing away 2-3GB of RAM makes no sense. Now, if I own it, I can easily assign 4GB of RAM then remove it once installed, by why? That's harder to script and still no benefit.

It's a bad habit to see resources as cheap and so waste them just because you can. Extra memory doesn't improve performance, it hurts it (just the tiniest bit). And it's not free, if you always apply twice as much RAM as you use (or four times, here), that gets costly one way or another. Either you wasted money overspeccing in the beginning, or you are stuck buying more now.