Running in production

Session persistence, backups, and upgrading an AppservR install.

Login sessions #

Logins last 15 minutes, and by default that clock resets for everyone the moment the server restarts: AppservR signs login sessions with a random secret generated when the process starts, so restarting the service invalidates every session that was still active, forcing a fresh login.

To keep sessions valid across restarts, set the APPSERVR_AUTH_SECRET environment variable to a fixed value before starting AppservR (as a service, this is set in the service’s environment, not in config.yml). Any long random string works; the important part is that it stays the same across restarts and isn’t shared outside your team.

Data and backups #

Everything AppservR needs to restore an install lives in two places next to the executable:

• config.yml, the server configuration.
• the SQLite database file (data.db by default, see Configuration reference → for how to change its location), holding every app, user, and group.

Your apps' own R source directories are wherever you pointed each app’s Shiny app directory field, so back those up too if they aren’t already under version control elsewhere.

Upgrading #

To upgrade, stop the service, replace the executable with the new version, and start it again. config.yml and the database file are untouched by the upgrade itself; AppservR runs its database migrations automatically on startup, so there’s no separate migration step to run.

As always, back up the database file before upgrading across a major version.