Setup RStudio Server on a Google Compute Engine Instance (Debian)

setup_rstudio.sh

#!/bin/bash

# Install RStudio Server on a Google Compute Engine instance running Debian
# Wheezy

CRAN_MIRROR='cran.rstudio.com'

pushd /tmp

# Install up-to-date version of R ---------------------------------------------
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key 381BA480
sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://$CRAN_MIRROR/bin/linux/debian wheezy-cran3/' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install r-base libcurl4-openssl-dev
                                                                                
# Set the default mirror and install some packages
sudo sh -c "echo 'options(repos=structure(c(CRAN=\"http://$CRAN_MIRROR/\")))' >> /etc/R/Rprofile.site"
sudo Rscript -e "install.packages(c('devtools', 'shiny', 'magrittr', 'dplyr', 'tidyr', 'ggplot2'))"


# Install RStudio Server ------------------------------------------------------
wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl0.9.8_0.9.8o-4squeeze14_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libssl0.9.8_0.9.8o-4squeeze14_amd64.deb
rm libssl0.9.8_0.9.8o-4squeeze14_amd64.deb

sudo apt-get -y install gdebi-core
wget http://download2.rstudio.org/rstudio-server-0.98.1091-amd64.deb
sudo gdebi rstudio-server-0.98.1091-amd64.deb
rm rstudio-server-0.98.1091-amd64.deb

sudo sh -c "echo 'www-address=127.0.0.1' >> /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf"
sudo sh -c "echo 'auth-required-user-group=rstudio_users' >> /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf"
sudo sh -c "echo 'session-timeout-minutes=30' >> /etc/rstudio/rsession.conf"
sudo sh -c "echo 'r-cran-repos=http://cran.rstudio.com/' >> /etc/rstudio/rsession.conf"

sudo addgroup rstudio_users
# TODO: create users and add them to the rstudio_users

sudo /etc/init.d/rstudio-server restart


# Set up nginx for reverse proxying
sudo apt-get -y install nginx
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
sudo sh -c "echo 'server {\n\tlisten 80;\n\tlocation /rstudio/ {\n\t\trewrite ^/rstudio/(.*)$ /\$1 break;\n\t\tproxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8787; \n\t\tproxy_redirect http://127.0.0.1:8787/ \$scheme://\$host/rstudio/;\n\t}\n}' > /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/rstudio"
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart


# Install other tools ---------------------------------------------------------
sudo apt-get -y install vim tmux git zsh ffmpeg pandoc texlive texlive-latex-extra texlive-xetex

popd

To create an instance named "rstudio" and run this script on startup:

gcloud compute instances create rstudio --metadata startup-script-url=https://gist.github.com/briandconnelly/259e763bc16393773c80/raw/bd834c26e059d75851bfdd083aeca58b9ab47775/setup_rstudio.sh