itzg / alexa-notes

An Amazon Alexa (aka Echo) skill that provides very basic note taking capability.

Alexa Notes

Much more details coming soon...

For now, some boring build/run/install notes.

Build-time Settings

When invoking a package, install, or spring-boot:run pass the assigned Amazon Alexa application ID.

-DapplicationId=...

When invoking a package or install, specify the Docker build host

-DdockerHost=...

You will need to explicitly provide the Alexa Skills Kit SDK. One way is to download it, unzip it locally, and specify the file:// URL via

-Dalexa-skills-kit.repo-url=...

Docker run-time

Declare the environment variables KEY_STORE_PW. NOTE: it assumes a Java keystore file is pre-configured at /certs/alexa-keystore.jks.

Converting x509 cert chain (i.e. from Let's Encrypt) into Java keystore

FQDN=YOUR_HOST_HERE

cd /etc/letsencrypt/live/$FQDN
openssl pkcs12 -export -in fullchain.pem -inkey privkey.pem -out keystore.p12 -name $FQDN

keytool -importkeystore -srckeystore keystore.p12 -srcstoretype PKCS12 \
    -destkeystore /var/alexa-note-taker/keystore.jks -alias $FQDN

General Linux service installation

Do the following as root...

useradd alexa
install -b -m 700 -o alexa -g alexa /root/alexa-note-taker-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar /var/alexa-note-taker
mkdir /var/alexa-note-taker
cd /var/alexa-note-taker
unzip alexa-note-taker-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar 'init/*'

Create the file application.properties with contents like

server.ssl.key-store=/var/alexa-note-taker/keystore.jks
server.ssl.key-store-password=YOUR_JKS_PASSWORD

And lock it down

chown alexa:alexa application.properties
chmod 600 application.properties

Installation on systemd-base system

Install the service unit

ln -s /var/alexa-note-taker/init/systemd/alexa-note-taker.service /etc/systemd/system
systemctl daemon-reload

In the end you should have

root@vultr:/var/alexa-note-taker# ls -l
total 36104
-rwx------ 1 alexa alexa 36956429 Dec 20 16:16 alexa-note-taker-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
-rw------- 1 alexa root       138 Dec 20 16:10 application.properties
drwxr-xr-x 3 root  root      4096 Dec 20 16:10 init
-rw------- 1 alexa root      3847 Dec 20 16:09 keystore.jks

root@vultr:/var/alexa-note-taker# ls -l /etc/systemd/system/alexa-note-taker.service
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 59 Dec 20 16:21 /etc/systemd/system/alexa-note-taker.service -> /var/alexa-note-taker/init/systemd/alexa-note-taker.service

And start the service

systemctl start alexa-note-taker

and check that it started up properly

systemctl status alexa-note-taker

which would look like

root@vultr:/var/alexa-note-taker# systemctl status -l alexa-note-taker
● alexa-note-taker.service - Alexa Note Taker
   Loaded: loaded (/var/alexa-note-taker/init/systemd/alexa-note-taker.service; linked; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2015-12-20 16:41:05 UTC; 41s ago
 Main PID: 7112 (alexa-note-take)
   CGroup: /system.slice/alexa-note-taker.service
           ├─7112 /bin/bash /var/alexa-note-taker/alexa-note-taker-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
           └─7126 /usr/bin/java -Dsun.misc.URLClassPath.disableJarChecking=true -jar /var/alexa-note-taker/alexa-note-taker-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

You can later view its logs with journalctl, such as

journalctl -f -u alexa-note-taker