Vagrant-CentOS-PHP

This project provides a Vagrant box for use as a LAMP stack, a Linux based server to host Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

The goal is to make it quick and simple to create and manage one or more development environments for Habari. In this example Vagrant is operating on top of VirtualBox. VirtualBox makes it possible to create a virtual server that can be built, copied, backed-up, transported to other hosts, stopped and resumed. Such a virtual server can take snapshots before important changes to permit roll-back, or to repeat specific tests.

Vagrant is used to create a virtual machine to serve as a base to be hosted by VirtualBox. Think of it as a nice way to throw up a new virtual machine with the latest version of Habari. After the VM exists it can be cloned inside VirtualBox to a VM that is no longer tied to Vagrant, or can be used directly through Vagrant.

All this means is that if you have one or more Habari based sites, you can quickly test your sites in a repeatable and portable fashion. Want to know how your site will work with a new version of Habari, well make a new VM with that version and find out. :-)

If you find this useful please consider contributing enhancements back to this project.

Quick Start

Install Vagrant, as per instructions here
Read about VirtualBox here
Fork this repository then create a local clone of that fork.

Use Vagrant to install the centos6.4_64.2 base box.

     $ vagrant box add centos6.4_64.2 \
     http://developer.nrel.gov/downloads/vagrant-boxes/CentOS-6.4-x86_64-v20130427.box

Move into the directory of your locally forked version of Vagrant-CentOS-PHP and fire up the box.
```
     $ cd vagrant-centos-php 
     $ vagrant up
```
Enjoy

Habari

In this example Habari will be installed. Habari is a PHP based publishing platform. Puppet is used to manage the install. It is using a custom Habari Puppet module that can be found here.

Base

The Vagrant base box is currently set to a CentOS flavor that would need to be locally named centos6.4_64.2. It can be found here, though other CentOS base boxes should work fine. Check vagrantbox.es for other bases box candidates or make your own.

Some changes may need to be made such as the network address, etc. Be sure to be consistent with the docroot folder, currently set to /var/www/html, in both the Vagrantfile and the manifest.

Known Issues

The VM will complain that No guest additions were detected on the base box for this VM! . . .. If this proves to be a problem, then install guest additions or try a different base box. This could be because the box does not contain X and guest additions would normally alter X. The cause is unclear at this time.
The time shown in the VM is likely incorrect.

Cloning in VirtualBox

It can be useful to clone the Vagrant box to a new VM to separate it from Vagrant control.

An example would be building a Habari box, then cloning that box so the clone can be used to test a particular site. Vagrant would no longer needed and the VM could be managed and customized in any way desired from VirtualBox. The Vagrant project would then be free to make new VMs, perhaps with different versions of Habari, without damaging the newly created clone.

When cloning the CentOS box in VirtualBox, you should do the following to avoid potential networking problems.

Take a snapshot of the original VM from VirtualBox
Start the original VM from VirtualBox and login using the credentials identified in the Vagrantfile

Remove existing persistent network rules

     sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Halt box and exit
```
     sudo halt
```
Use VirtualBox to make a clone of the original to a new VM with a distinct name
- Select reinitialize the mac addresses...
- Select full clone
- Select current machine state
Manually update the HWADDR in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0, in the clone, to match its newly created mac address.
Do this by starting the newly created clone from VirtualBox and login the same way you did when altering original VM. The mac address is shown in the network tab for the network device. Be sure to enter the mac address using the format with : between each two characters as is shown with the existing mac address.
Fix VirtualBox shares. Vagrant is no longer mounting the shares, so you will need to ensure they are established and mounted correctly.
Without action they will still mirror the parent and that is likely not what you want. The most imporant share is the docroot. It is likely the reason you elected to clone out the VM in the first place.
- Create a directory to keep the docroot for this new clone, for example a new directory called myclone in your ~/projects directory.
- Copy the docroot from the parent of the clone to the newly created directory. In a terminal in from the vagrant-centos-php directory...
```
   cp -r docroot ~/projects/myclone/
```
- Now edit the shares in VirtualBox for your clone. Make sure that the /var/www/html share points to your new location ~/projects/myclone/docroot.
- Edit the /etc/fstab to automatically mount the /var/www/html share. In this example the mount is using the vagrant user and group credentials in read-write mode.
```
   /var/www/html           /var/www/html           vboxsf  uid=501,gid=501,rw      0 0
```
If you ssh into your new clone and look at the /var/www/html directory you should see something like the following.
```
     [vagrant@habaridev ~]$ ls -lrtha /var/www/html
     total 18K
     drwxr-xr-x 6 root    root    4.0K May 30 01:20 ..
     -rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  270 Jun  3 19:56 test.php
     -rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 7.9K Jun  3 19:56 requirements.php
     -rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  103 Jun  3 19:56 index.html
     drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   11 Jun  3 19:56 habari-0.9.1
     drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    6 Jun  3 21:31 .
     [vagrant@habaridev ~]$
```

Copyright and License

Growing Liberty can be contacted via the contact page.

     Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
     you may not use this except in compliance with the License.
     You may obtain a copy of the License at
     
       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
     
     Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
     distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
     WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
     See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
     limitations under the License.

GrowingLiberty.com