OCI Flarum DevOps

Production-ready DevOps project for deploying a Flarum community forum on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Always Free Tier.

Project Overview

This project provisions and configures the complete infrastructure for a Flarum forum — fully automated, from bare metal to a running application.

• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) provisions OCI compute, networking, and security resources
• Configuration Management (Ansible) handles OS-level setup, Docker, firewalld, and service orchestration
• Containerized Application (Docker Compose) runs Flarum + MySQL as isolated services
• CI/CD Pipeline (GitHub Actions) triggers deployment on every push to main
• Always Free Tier cost optimization — zero infrastructure cost on OCI

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    OCI Always Free Tier                     │
│                                                             │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│
│  │                   Public Subnet                         ││
│  │                                                         ││
│  │  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐  ││
│  │  │           Flarum Web Server (VM.Standard.E2.1)     │  ││
│  │  │              1 OCPU / 1 GB RAM                    │  ││
│  │  │                                                   │  ││
│  │  │  ┌──────────────┐           ┌──────────────────┐  │  ││
│  │  │  │    Flarum    │◄─────────►│      MySQL       │  │  ││
│  │  │  │  Container   │           │    Container     │  │  ││
│  │  │  └──────────────┘           └──────────────────┘  │  ││
│  │  └───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘  ││
│  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Tech Stack

Infrastructure & Orchestration

Category	Technology	Purpose
Cloud Provider	OCI Always Free Tier	Compute, networking, zero-cost hosting
IaC	Terraform (>= 1.0)	Declarative infrastructure provisioning
Provider	Oracle/OCI (~> 5.0)	Terraform provider for OCI resources
Config Management	Ansible (7.0)	Server configuration, service deployment

Containerization

Category	Technology	Purpose
Runtime	Docker + Docker Compose	Container orchestration on the instance
App Image	mondedie/flarum:stable	Official Flarum community image
Database Image	mysql:8.0	MySQL with custom my.cnf tuning
Web Server	nginx:alpine	Reverse proxy (optional, TLS termination)

Application

Category	Technology	Purpose
Forum	Flarum	PHP-based lightweight community forum
Database	MySQL 8.0	Data persistence with InnoDB
Search	MySQL Full-Text	Built-in search (no Elasticsearch dependency)

CI/CD & Automation

Category	Technology	Purpose
CI/CD Platform	GitHub Actions	Automated pipeline triggered on push/PR
Container Registry	GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io)	Docker image storage
Build	Docker Buildx	Multi-architecture, cached builds
SSH	appleboy/ssh-action	Remote command execution for health checks
Linting	ansible-lint, yamllint	Playbook and YAML validation

Security

Category	Technology	Purpose
Network Isolation	VCN + Subnets	Public/private subnet separation
Firewall	Security Lists + firewalld	Port-level access control
Authentication	SSH Key	Key-only instance access
TLS	Let's Encrypt / Certbot	Free SSL certificate automation
Secrets	GitHub Secrets	Encrypted credential storage

Operating System

Category	Technology	Purpose
OS	Oracle Linux 8	OCI-optimized Linux distribution
Init	cloud-init / user_data	First-boot instance configuration
Package Manager	dnf	RPM-based package installation

Directory Structure

.
├── terraform/           # Infrastructure as Code
│   ├── main.tf          # VCN, subnets, compute, security
│   ├── variables.tf     # Input variable declarations
│   ├── outputs.tf       # Output values (IPs, URLs)
│   ├── user_data.sh     # Web server cloud-init script
│   └── mysql_user_data.sh
├── ansible/             # Configuration Management
│   ├── playbook.yml     # Server provisioning playbook
│   └── templates/       # Jinja2 templates (docker-compose, env, setup)
├── docker/              # Container Images
│   ├── flarum/          # Flarum Dockerfile + setup script
│   └── mysql/           # MySQL Dockerfile + custom config
├── .github/             # CI/CD
│   ├── workflows/       # GitHub Actions workflow definitions
│   └── SECRETS_SETUP.md # Detailed secrets configuration guide
└── README.md

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.