Tutorial 03: Deploy to a VPS

Deploy Bakend on a Linux VPS using the release binary and systemd.

Outcome: Bakend runs as a system service, survives reboots, and responds on /health.

Prerequisites

Linux VPS (x64 or arm64) with SSH access
sudo privileges
Port 8080 open in your firewall (or change port in config)

Step 1: Install the binary

Clone the repo to get install.sh, or download a release tarball manually.

Option A — install script (latest release):

git clone https://github.com/alpbak/bakend.git
cd bakend
sudo sh scripts/install.sh

Option B — specific version:

curl -fsSL https://alpbak.github.io/bakend/install.sh | sudo sh
# Or: sudo BAKEND_VERSION=1.0.1 sh scripts/install.sh

Verify:

bak version

Step 2: Create project directory

sudo useradd --system --home /opt/bakend --shell /usr/sbin/nologin bakend || true
sudo mkdir -p /opt/bakend/{collections,functions,jobs,storage}
sudo cp bakend.json.example /opt/bakend/bakend.json
sudo chown -R bakend:bakend /opt/bakend

Edit production config:

sudo nano /opt/bakend/bakend.json

Set a strong auth.jwtSecret and adjust port if needed.

Step 3: Add your project files

Copy collection definitions, functions, and jobs into /opt/bakend/:

sudo cp -r examples/todo-api/collections/* /opt/bakend/collections/
sudo cp -r examples/todo-api/functions/* /opt/bakend/functions/
sudo chown -R bakend:bakend /opt/bakend

For TypeScript functions and jobs, the production binary requires pre-built or compatible setup — for beta, start with collections and REST API, or run from source with Bun on the server for development VPS setups.

Step 4: Install systemd unit

sudo cp packaging/systemd/bakend.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now bakend

Step 5: Verify

sudo systemctl status bakend
curl http://localhost:8080/health

From your machine (replace with your VPS IP):

curl http://<your-vps-ip>:8080/health

Verify it works

bak version prints the expected version
systemctl status bakend shows active (running)
/health returns {"status":"ok",...}
Service restarts after sudo systemctl restart bakend

Docker alternative

For containerized deployment:

export BAKEND_AUTH_JWT_SECRET=your-production-secret
mkdir -p data && cp bakend.json.example data/bakend.json
docker compose up -d

See Deployment for full Docker and upgrade instructions.