Table of Contents

Deploying MESS on a Raspberry Pi

This setup assumes that you already have a PostgreSQL database for MESS up and running. For information on how to setup Microsoft SQL Server for production, visit here.

If you are looking to deploy MESS without a docker container for the web server and with Nginx, visit the deployment wiki page.

1. Flash an SD Card with the latest 64 bit Raspberry Pi OS.

This can be done in any way you wish, although the simplest way to do so is with the Raspberry Pi Imager. All variants of the OS (the standard install, install with additional recommended software, or the Lite version ) will all work. The Raspberry Pi Imager software conveniently allows you to set a custom username, hostname, and password. Like always, remember to take note of what you choose for these.

2. Connect your Pi to the Internet

Once you can boot into your Pi, connect it to the Internet.

Important Note: Because this Pi will be running a web server, it is recommended to assign your Pi a static IP address to make full DNS setup easier. However, because the Raspberry Pi OS comes with mDNS, this is not essential.

3. (Optional) Enable Raspberry Pi Connect

If you would like easy remote access to your Pi from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection, check out Raspberry Pi Connect

4. Update Raspberry Pi Packages

Before installing dependencies for MESS, we must update all packages on the system. You can use these commands...

sudo apt update

sudo apt full-upgrade

sudo apt autoremove

If prompted to reboot during these updates, it is recommended to do so.

5. Install Dependencies

For this deployment setup, we will assume that you would like to run your MESS web server inside a docker container.

To Install Docker

sudo apt install docker.io

To Install .NET

curl -sSL https://dot.net/v1/dotnet-install.sh | bash /dev/stdin --channel STS

After installing dotnet, you will want to include it in your system path. To do this, we can run these commands to append the pathing information to our .bashrc.

echo 'export DOTNET_ROOT=$HOME/.dotnet' >> ~/.bashrc

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.dotnet' >> ~/.bashrc

To apply the .bashrc changes to our current shell session run

source ~/.bashrc

6. Download MESS

To ensure compatibility with the auto-update script, run this command to the latest version of MESS into your home directory.

git clone https://github.com/VidetteMakes/MESS.git

7. Set the Repository Directory as Safe for Git

To allow git to work properly with the files created by root from the update script, run this command.

sudo git config --global --add safe.directory ~/MESS

8. Update ~/MESS/deployment-resources/raspberry-pi/.env

Inside this file you should see...

ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production
ConnectionStrings__MESSConnection=Server=YOUR_CONNECTION_STRING_GOES_HERE

Remember to populate your database connection string in this file. Otherwise, the web server will be unable to connect to your database. To see how you can setup a SQL Server database in a docker container (not recommended for full production scenarios but good for testing) visit the local deployment wiki page.

9. Make the mess-update.sh Script Executable

Run this chmod command to make the update script executable.

chmod +x ~/MESS/deployment-resources/raspberry-pi/update-mess.sh

10. Set up a Cron Job for the Script

To run the mess-update script on a schedule, you can set up a cron job.

Run

sudo crontab -e

Then, append a line like this to the end of the file. Remember to replace YOUR-USERNAME with your actual username.

59 23 * * 1-4 /home/YOUR-USERNAME/MESS/deployment-resources/raspberry-pi/update-mess.sh >> /home/YOUR-USERNAME/MESS/deployment-resources/raspberry-pi/update.log 2>&1

11. Set up Logrotate to Manage Deployment Logs

Using logrotate to manage logs for deployments allows the automated pruning of logs so they don't pile up.

To set this up, first create a config file for the deployment script logs.

sudo nano /etc/logrotate.d/mess-update

Inside your text editor, add this.

/home/YOUR-USERNAME/MESS/deployment-resources/raspberry-pi/update-mess.sh update.log {
    weekly
    rotate 4
    compress
    missingok
    notifempty
    create 644 admin admin
}

For those curious, here is a breakdown of the options...

weekly → Rotate once per week (other options: daily, monthly).

rotate 4 → Keep the last 4 rotated logs; older ones are deleted automatically.

compress → Compress old logs with gzip.

missingok → Don’t fail if the log file doesn’t exist yet.

notifempty → Don’t rotate if the log is empty.

create 644 user group → After rotation, create a new log file with these permissions.

(Optional) If you would like to do a dry run of your log rotation setup for deployments (without actually rotating the logs), you can run the command below.

sudo logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/mess-update

Important Note: By default, logrotate runs via a cron job daily (/etc/cron.daily/logrotate). It will check your config and rotate weekly or as configured.

Deployment Completed!

At this point you should have MESS running on your Raspberry Pi (or other Unix based machine). Congratulations!

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