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Platforms

Deploying to VMs & Bare Metal

Deploy your RivetKit app to any Linux VM or bare metal host.

Steps

Prerequisites

Upload Your App

  • Build your RivetKit app locally
  • Copy the build output to your server (example):
scp -r ./dist user@server:/opt/rivetkit-app

Place the files somewhere readable by the service user, such as /opt/rivetkit-app.

Set Environment Variables

After creating your project on the Rivet dashboard, select VM & Bare Metal as your provider. You’ll be provided RIVET_ENDPOINT and RIVET_PUBLIC_ENDPOINT environment variables to use in the next step.

Create the systemd Service

Create /etc/systemd/system/rivetkit-app.service:

[Unit]
Description=RivetKit App
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/opt/rivetkit-app
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node server.js
Restart=on-failure
Environment=RIVET_ENDPOINT=<your-rivet-endpoint>
Environment=RIVET_PUBLIC_ENDPOINT=<your-rivet-public-endpoint>

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Replace the environment values with those from the Rivet dashboard and adjust paths to match your deployment.

Start the Service

Reload systemd units and start the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now rivetkit-app.service

Connect to Rivet

  1. Ensure your server is accessible via a public URL (e.g. https://my-app.example.com)
  2. On the Rivet dashboard, paste your URL with the /api/rivet path into the connect form (e.g. https://my-app.example.com/api/rivet)
  3. Click “Done”

If you front your app with a reverse proxy or load balancer (NGINX, HAProxy, Caddy, AWS ALB/NLB, etc.), raise its idle / read timeout to at least 1 hour (3600 seconds). Rivet envoys connect to your app over long-lived WebSockets, and clients (browsers, SDKs) do the same. Default proxy timeouts (typically 30 to 60 seconds) drop these connections and cause reconnect storms.

Examples:

  • NGINX: proxy_read_timeout 3600s; and proxy_send_timeout 3600s; in the relevant location block.
  • HAProxy: timeout client 1h and timeout server 1h in the matching frontend / backend.
  • AWS ALB / NLB: set the load balancer attribute idle_timeout.timeout_seconds = 3600.

Operating

Restart

Restart the service after deploying new builds or environment changes:

sudo systemctl restart rivetkit-app.service

Logs

Follow realtime logs when debugging:

sudo journalctl -u rivetkit-app.service -f
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