Mini Automation Project

Learning Objectives

• Understand basic deployment automation concepts
• Learn to create reliable and idempotent shell scripts
• Develop skills in service management
• Implement basic deployment verification
• Create maintainable automation scripts

Requirements

You are required to write a Bash script deploy-site.sh that automates the deployment of a static website:

1. Script Structure
   • Well-organized script with clear comments
   • Usage instructions displayed with -h or --help
   • Accept a parameter for the source directory
   • Basic error handling throughout
2. Environment Setup
   • Check if Nginx is installed; install if missing
   • Verify the web root directory exists
   • Create it if necessary
3. Deployment Process
   • Copy HTML/CSS/JS files from source directory to web root
   • Set appropriate permissions for web files
   • Create a simple backup of any existing files before overwriting
   • Handle common errors: missing source directory, permission issues
4. Service Management
   • Test Nginx configuration before restarting (nginx -t)
   • Restart the Nginx service
   • Handle service restart failures gracefully
5. Verification
   • Send an HTTP GET request to localhost
   • Check for a 200 status code response
   • Display a clear success or failure message

Stretch Goals

• Add timestamp logging for each deployment step
• Implement simple version numbering for deployments
• Create a rollback function to restore the previous version

Deliverables

• deploy-site.sh implementing all required steps
• Sample HTML files for testing
• Documentation covering: usage, what each part does, and troubleshooting tips

References

• Bash Scripting Tutorial
• Nginx Beginner's Guide
• Linux File Permissions Explained
• curl Command Examples
• HTTP Status Codes - MDN

Once you complete this task you will be able to automate basic website deployments using shell scripting - the same principle behind every CI/CD pipeline you will build in the Intermediate level.