Introduction

Just one of the many benefits of cloud computing is that it allows for easy access to remote resources wherever you have an internet connection. This has allowed us to develop services that can stream video, stream music, and host files without physical access to the storage. In a similar vein, it would be great if you could run a full-fledged integrated development environment (IDE) and develop in the cloud. Thats exactly what the cloud9 application is trying to harness — their application brings development to the cloud. You can write code, close your browser, and come back to exactly where you left off and run your code whenever you need. Stack Harbor has made it easy for your to deploy a cloud9 application on our infrastructure using our turnkey cloud9 application stack.

Accessing Your Application

Once your stack is built, you will be able to access the IDE by pointing your browser to your Stack’s public IP address. You will be prompted by nginx for login credentials. We’ve enforced this setting so that your projects are protected from malicious users if anyone were to get a hand on your Stack’s IP address.

In order to gain access to your cloud9 application, you will need to login to your remote machine using SSH. If you don’t already know how to use SSH, we’ve written a detailed “Getting Started With Your Stack” tutorial that will instruct you on how to connect to your Stack.

Once you’ve logged into your remote machine, pay attention to the block of text that is logged to your terminal. This is called the message of the day (MOTD) and contains sensitive information pertaining to your cloud9 Stack. The first set of credentials are the username and password needed to successfully authenticate with the nginx server. We recommend you take note of all of the relevant information and credentials and remove the message of the day by running rm -f /etc/motd in your terminal. If you return to your browser and input the login information shown, you should be directed to the introduction page provided by cloud9. Here, you can change your IDE theme and syntax theme. Moving forward, your cloud9 installation contains a workspace folder in which you can house all of your projects.

Final Words

Congratulations! You’re ready to begin developing in the cloud. cloud9 has a multitude of features that we haven’t even discussed such as the ability to execute code, preview in any browser, and set up a database to use with an application. For more information, check out the detailed documentation written by the folks who develop and maintain cloud9. For more resources on various development and server administration tasks, check out our Community Section. From all of us at Stack Harbor, ahoy!