connor
a001a09fdf
Two-stage build. The builder bakes the embedding model into the image (~65 MB), so a cold container needs no outbound access to Hugging Face and starts scoring in 0.4s -- verified with HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1. Three things the smoke test caught that would each have failed in production: - Debian's base image already ships a system account named "news", so useradd exits 9 on the collision. The runtime user is "app". - The image runs as uid 10001 rather than root, so a host-owned volume gives SQLite "attempt to write a readonly database". Compose needs the `U` mount flag. - The baked model cache was root-owned, making fastembed log a permission warning and discard its tree cache on every start. Deployment targets the EXISTING service rather than a parallel one: same vhost, and NTFY_TOPIC=news-triage because the old service defaulted to that rather than setting it, so the phone subscription keeps working. The Caddy change is the consequential one and is documented as such: the vhost moves from LAN-only to public, with /api/feedback/* bypassing Authelia because ntfy runs action buttons from the phone and a native app cannot complete an interactive login -- the same exemption ntfy, Immich and Jellyfin already have on this box. That path is HMAC-signed per (cluster, kind).
Deploying
This replaces the news-backend service (from ../news_triage) in place: same
host, same vhost, same ntfy topic.
1. Compose
Replace the news-backend block in ~/compose.yml:
news-backend:
image: git.rcjohnstone.com/connor/news:latest
restart: unless-stopped
networks:
- internal
environment:
- TZ=America/Louisville
- NEWS_DB=/data/news.db
- NEWS_CONFIG_DIR=/config
- NTFY_URL=${NTFY_URL}
# The old service defaulted to this topic (bin_support.rs:121) rather than
# setting it, so reusing it keeps the existing phone subscription working.
- NTFY_TOPIC=news-triage
- NTFY_USER=${NTFY_USER}
- NTFY_PASS=${NTFY_PASS}
# REQUIRED for feedback buttons. ntfy runs http actions FROM THE PHONE, so
# this must be the public URL, not a container address. Its absence is
# exactly why the previous version's buttons never fired.
- NEWS_API_BASE_URL=https://news.rcjohnstone.com
- NEWS_FEEDBACK_SECRET=${NEWS_FEEDBACK_SECRET}
# One LLM call per day, for the digest prose only.
- NEWS_LITELLM_KEY=${NEWS_LITELLM_KEY}
volumes:
# `U` makes podman chown the volume to the container's uid. The image runs
# as uid 10001, not root, so without it SQLite fails with
# "attempt to write a readonly database".
- ./data/news2:/data:U
- ./config/news2:/config:ro
healthcheck:
# NOT curl: the v0.2 image shipped none, so its healthcheck failed forever
# while the service was fine and `podman ps` reported it unhealthy for days.
test: ["CMD", "python", "-c",
"import urllib.request,sys; sys.exit(0 if urllib.request.urlopen('http://localhost:3000/healthz',timeout=4).status==200 else 1)"]
interval: 60s
timeout: 5s
retries: 3
start_period: 20s
Copy profile/*.toml to ~/config/news2/. A bind-mounted config edit needs
sudo podman restart news-backend; podman-compose up -d will not restart a
container when only a mounted file changed. An environment change does need
the full up -d.
2. Caddy
The existing news.rcjohnstone.com block serves a static SPA from
/srv/news/dist and proxies only /api*. This app renders its own pages, so
the block simplifies -- but it must also become reachable from the phone.
# ddns: public
news.rcjohnstone.com {
import secure_headers
import accesslog
# ntfy executes a notification's action buttons FROM THE PHONE, and a native
# app cannot complete an interactive login -- the same reason ntfy, Immich
# and Jellyfin are exempted from the identity gateway on this box. So this
# one path bypasses Authelia. It is safe to: every request carries an HMAC
# signed over (cluster_id, kind), so a leaked URL casts one vote on one
# story rather than acting as a bearer token for the model.
@feedback path /api/feedback/*
handle @feedback {
reverse_proxy news-backend:3000
}
# Everything else is browser-facing, so it goes behind Authelia. Tapping the
# digest notification opens a browser, where an interactive login works.
handle {
import authelia
reverse_proxy news-backend:3000
}
}
The change from the current block is deliberate and worth stating plainly: the
vhost moves from LAN-only (tls internal + import internal, which aborts
anything outside 10.0.0.0/24, 10.0.1.0/24, 10.89.0.0/16) to public. Without
that, feedback buttons fail on cellular and the digest link is unopenable away
from home -- and silent failure there is precisely how the previous version
ended up with 32 labels in a week.
/srv/news/dist becomes unused and the news-update systemd timer that
populated it can be disabled.
3. Scheduling
*/15 * * * * podman exec news-backend python -m news.cli poll
*/20 * * * * podman exec news-backend python -m news.cli notify
45 8 * * * podman exec news-backend python -m news.cli digest
4. Verifying it actually works
podman exec news-backend python -m news.cli poll # fetch, embed, cluster
podman exec news-backend python -m news.cli simulate # what WOULD be sent
podman exec news-backend python -m news.cli notify --dry-run
Then the one test that matters, because it is the loop that was broken before:
send a real notification, tap a feedback button on the phone, and confirm a
row lands in feedback:
podman exec news-backend python -c \
"import sqlite3;print(sqlite3.connect('/data/news.db').execute('select * from feedback').fetchall())"