Introduction

With developer tools moving to the cloud, creation and adoption of cloud IDE (Integrated Development Environment) platforms is growing. Cloud IDEs allow for real-time collaboration between developer teams to work in a unified development environment that minimizes incompatibilities and enhances productivity. Accessible through web browsers, cloud IDEs are available from every type of modern device.

code-server is Microsoft Visual Studio Code running on a remote server and accessible directly from your browser. Visual Studio Code is a modern code editor with integrated Git support, a code debugger, smart autocompletion, and customizable and extensible features. This means that you can use various devices running different operating systems, and always have a consistent development environment on hand.

In this tutorial, you will set up the code-server cloud IDE platform on your Ubuntu 20.04 machine and expose it at your domain, secured with free Let’s Encrypt TLS certificates. In the end, you’ll have Microsoft Visual Studio Code running on your Ubuntu 20.04 server, available at your domain and protected with a password.

Prerequisites

• A server running Ubuntu 20.04 with at least 2GB RAM, root access, and a sudo, non-root account. You can set this up by following this initial server setup guide.
• Nginx installed on your server. For a guide on how to do this, complete Steps 1 to 4 of How To Install Nginx on Ubuntu 20.04.
• A fully registered domain name to host code-server, pointed to your server. This tutorial will use code-server. your-domain throughout. You can purchase a domain name on Namecheap, get one for free on Freenom, or use the domain registrar of your choice. For DigitalOcean, you can follow this introduction to DigitalOcean DNS for details on how to add them.

Step 1 — Installing code-server

In this section, you will set up code-server on your server. This entails downloading the latest version and creating a systemd service that will keep code-server always running in the background. You’ll also specify a restart policy for the service, so that code-server stays available after possible crashes or reboots.

You’ll store all data pertaining to code-server in a folder named ~/code-server. Create it by running the following command:

mkdir ~/code-server

Navigate to it:

cd ~/code-server

You’ll need to head over to the Github releases page of code-server and pick the latest Linux build (the file will contain ‘linux’ in its name). At the time of writing, the latest version was 3.3.1. Download it using wget by running the following command:

wget https://github.com/cdr/code-server/releases/download/v3.3.1/code-server-3.3.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Then, unpack the archive by running:

tar -xzvf code-server-3.3.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz

You’ll get a folder named exactly as the original file you downloaded, which contains the code-server source code. Copy it to /usr/lib/code-server so you’ll be able to access it system wide by running the following command:

sudo cp -r code-server-3.3.1-linux-amd64 /usr/lib/code-server

Then, create a symbolic link at /usr/bin/code-server, pointing to the code-server executable:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/code-server/bin/code-server /usr/bin/code-server

Next, create a folder for code-server, where it will store user data:

sudo mkdir /var/lib/code-server

Now that you’ve downloaded code-server and made it available system-wide, you will create a systemd service to keep code-server running in the background at all times.

You’ll store the service configuration in a file named code-server.service, in the /lib/systemd/system directory, where systemd stores its services. Create it using your text editor:

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/code-server.service

Add the following lines:

[Unit]
Description=code-server
After=nginx.service

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment=PASSWORD=your_password
ExecStart=/usr/bin/code-server --bind-addr 127.0.0.1:8080 --user-data-dir /var/lib/code-server --auth password
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Here you first specify the description of the service. Then, you state that the nginx service must be started before this one. After the [Unit] section, you define the type of the service (simple means that the process should be simply run) and provide the command that will be executed.

You also specify that the global code-server executable should be started with a few arguments specific to code-server. --bind-addr 127.0.0.1:8080 binds it to localhost at port 8080, so it’s only directly accessible from inside of your server. --user-data-dir /var/lib/code-server sets its user data directory, and --auth password specifies that it should authenticate visitors with a password, specified in the PASSWORD environment variable declared on the line above it.

Remember to replace your_password with your desired password, then save and close the file.

The next line tells systemd to restart code-server in all malfunction events (for example, when it crashes or the process is killed). The [Install] section orders systemd to start this service when it becomes possible to log in to your server.

Start the code-server service by running the following command:

sudo systemctl start code-server

Check that it’s started correctly by observing its status:

sudo systemctl status code-server

You’ll see output similar to:

Output
● code-server.service - code-server
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/code-server.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2020-05-20 13:03:40 UTC; 12s ago
   Main PID: 14985 (node)
      Tasks: 18 (limit: 2345)
     Memory: 26.1M
     CGroup: /system.slice/code-server.service
             ├─14985 /usr/lib/code-server/bin/../lib/node /usr/lib/code-server/bin/.. --bind-addr 127.0.0.1:8080 --user-data-dir /var/lib/code-server --auth>
             └─15010 /usr/lib/code-server/lib/node /usr/lib/code-server --bind-addr 127.0.0.1:8080 --user-data-dir /var/lib/code-server --auth password

May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 systemd[1]: Started code-server.
May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 code-server[15010]: info  Wrote default config file to ~/.config/code-server/config.yaml
May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 code-server[15010]: info  Using config file ~/.config/code-server/config.yaml
May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 code-server[15010]: info  Using user-data-dir /var/lib/code-server
May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 code-server[15010]: info  code-server 3.3.1 6f1309795e1cb930edba68cdc7c3dcaa01da0ab3
May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 code-server[15010]: info  HTTP server listening on http://127.0.0.1:8080
May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 code-server[15010]: info      - Using password from $PASSWORD
May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 code-server[15010]: info      - To disable use `--auth none`
May 20 13:03:40 code-server-update-2004 code-server[15010]: info    - Not serving HTTPS

To make code-server start automatically after a server reboot, enable its service by running the following command:

sudo systemctl enable code-server

In this step, you’ve downloaded code-server and made it available globally. Then, you’ve created a systemd service for it and enabled it, so code-server will start at every server boot. Next, you’ll expose it at your domain by configuring Nginx to serve as a reverse proxy between the visitor and code-server.

#ubuntu #code-server #cloud ide platform