Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I'm trying to figure out how to go about making an easy way to distribute a "dev environment" for working with my organization's Wordpress site. We currently have a local Linux server running the Wordpress site, and a VirtualBox image that is horribly out of date and a very poor representation of this server. We currently distribute this to team members for their local development, which causes lots of problems as the local image is often too different.
I'm not too worried about the database aspect of things; I'm thinking of just doing weekly dumps from the live server which can be imported by developers to keep their local up to date.
I'm more interested in finding an easy to distribute a preconfigured stack to users on OSX or Windows that already has PHP/Apache/MySQL configured by me, a git client set up to pull all the static files on command--something the user can just run, then go to localhost:8000 to see it. I'd also like some way for them to edit the files that were pulled from the git repository.
I'm currently looking into Docker and Vagrant but I'm not sure what's more appropriate for this task—Docker seems like it would be more suited to Linux machines. I know Vagrant supports mapping external folders into the VM, which seems like it'd solve my problem, but I wanted to ask for more suggestions before I start learning Chef/Puppet/etc.
I think both Vagrant and Docker may be used to solve your problem.
Vagrant may be more adequate to share the environment with Windows/mac machines, but integration with Docker in these systems are better day-by-day using tools such as boot2docker.
Docker by contrast requires using a moder Linux Kernel or one of these tools.
If I had to develop the Vagrant option, I would setup a machine with all the dependencies installed in the same machine. To install you can use one of the provisioners available in Vagrant (e.g.: Chef, Puppet). This may be easier if you have previous experience with them and/or if you are not very keen on bash. There are a lot of examples you can check to see how you can do it, such as https://github.com/r8/vagrant-lamp
Using Docker is also a very good option. Answering your question, you can share any local folder of the host machine with a container (using the docker run option -v or --volume). In this case I would run each of the services you want to provide (i.e.: php server, MySQL, Apache..) as independent containers, and linking them using the docker run option --link. Programming your Dockerfiles to build this containers may result more difficult than if you were using Chef or Puppet (although you could use them to build the containers, the integration is not as good as with Vagrant). But with Docker you can take advance of all the apps ready to use you have available in the Docker Hub. Also I would recommend you a docker tool called fig (www.fig.sh) that let running a container cluster linking and configuring the services easily, and it's allow to manage all the containers in a very comfortable way. Again you can find very illustrative examples of this user case over the internet, as for example https://github.com/kasperisager/phpstack
Related
Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 6 years ago.
Improve this question
I am fairly new and interested in the Go programming language. I have the intention of using it to code a simple website that includes a shopping cart.
How to install golang on windows server? Is it the same process as a regular computer?
What steps do I take to deploy the website using the Windows server once it is finished.
To what extend is it required to use html, css, or javascript?
How can I keep the site running on the server for other users in our network/LAN to access it?
Any helpful information regarding web apps and/or windows server machines is appreciated!
This is as much a general dev ops question as it is specific to Go. A lot of things to consider here and everyone will have varying preferences but here are some guidelines I'd recommend:
It's not necessary to install the Go tool chain on your production server. You then have to maintain your Go installation on both your development and production environments and if your production server is a different OS than your Windows computer (eg. a Linux distribution) this will get out of hand quickly. Instead, just develop on your local and cross compile to the OS of your production server.
One thing you will need to keep on your production server is whatever DB you choose to work with your Go program.
You can then sftp or transfer through a method of your choice your compiled binary over to your production server along with your static web files. Once the binary is on your production server you can fire it up when you're SSH'ed in eg. ./programname
Depending on how you want to use Go, you don't need Apache. Use the net/http package to serve up your Html, CSS and JS files. You can transfer these static files over after you've worked on them on your local or you can just keep them in a Github repo and git pull them from your prod server as needed, assuming you've installed git there.
You generally don't need to worry about keeping it "running" on your production server. http.ListenAndServe listens on your port for incoming requests. If your server reboots or shuts downs you can automatically have your compiled binary start up along with it.
You can also work with things like Vagrant, Virtual Box and Ansible for high quality mimicking of your production environment and spinning up new servers according to your desired specs.
Ok, so I'm a bit late jumping onto the Vagrant band-wagon, but figured it's about time I did.
Brief background: I've been a freelance developer for quite some time now developing solutions based on Magento and Drupal, and have finally gathered enough demand to warrant the need to build up a team. Previously, whenever I started development on any new project, I use to clone a preconfigured base VM in Virtualbox, and use that. Of course there were still configurations to do on it until I could start with actual development. Every project's web files therefore all resided inside /var/www/projectname on an Ubuntu VM.
Now I've read up on why I should be Vagrant, especially considering that I now have a team of 4 developers working with me, but I would appreciate any feedback on the following questions I have:
Moderator note: I know this isn't exactly asking a programming question, so please advise if this could be turned into a wiki, as I'm sure that feedback into this will help someone just like me.
I am still reading through the Vagrant docs, so please be kind...noob questions ahead!
I now work on a Mac. Does it matter if I use Parallels, and another developer uses VirtualBox on Windows if we need to share or collaborate on projects?
When I issue the command, vagrant up for an existing project, will it start the VM up as I would in VirtualBox or will it recreate the VM?
Is the command vagrant halt the same issuing sudo poweroff in Ubuntu, for example?
I currently use PhpStorm and its SFTP feature for project files synchronization with the option to exclude certain files on the remote server (VM) from being imported and sync'ed...will I be able to specify the same using Vagrant folder sharing?
Could I easily zip or archive a Vagrant VM, move it to a file server, and then "re-import" when and if needed? (example bug fixes, or new feature enhancements)
What do we use to easily provision VMs for common projects? Should we being using Puppet, Chef, Puphpet or Salt? I've seen that Puphpet provides a nice GUI to create a vagrantfile which I'm sure once generated, we could customize for future projects. At a very basic level, we need to ensure that certain applications are installed onto the server (zip, phpmyadmin, OpenSSL, etc.), certain PHP settings, PHP and PEAR modules, and Apache settings. I already have base VMs set up as I'd like them for both Magento projects as well as Drupal projects.
EDIT: I should also add that I use to enable Host Adapter in VirtualBox (on Windows), configure the VHost inside Ubuntu, and then update my host machine's hosts file with something like 192.168.56.3 drupalsite1.dev. So I'm unsure if Port Forwarding would be better to use? I'm not very clued up on that I must admit.
Like i said - noob questions! However, I would really appreciate any feedback on these questions. My deepest thanks!
Most of what you are asking is subjective so common sense and experience are the best tools.
I recommend all team members use the same provider (parallels isn't officially supported) and virtualbox is readily available. The base boxes, by provider, could have slight variances, you never know.
Vagrant will start the vm similarly but vagrant also does other things like configuration the network, hostname, shared folders, etc. Not quite the same. The big power lies in the capability to be able to teardown the environment and bring it back in a cleanly provisioned state.
Basically, yes.
Yes, your vagrant VMs are just like your own mini cloud. You would interact the servers similar to the way you'd interact with external boxes.
Yes, the simple answer is that it's called packaging and you can share the resultant .box. However, it's good practice to keep the base box and provisioning scripts under CM so you can rebuild and modify as needed.
For provisioners, I think it is dependent upon your experience and your familiarity with the provisioner language and how much you want to invest in learning them. Look through the provisioner support and see what fits your need and budget. Chef has a very steep learning curve, in my experience, but also has a lot of thought built in. Most provisioners have wide libraries of available installation "scripts".
The host adapter can be handled identically in vagrant.
Learn by doing, I recommend going down the table of contents (navbar) of the vagrant docs and trying each step where it makes sense. Then make your decisions.
That is my 2 cents. Hope this helps!
First with the background...
We have a Linux server that supports multiple projects.
The Clearcase server and repository are installed on this Linux server.
Different projects require different cross-compilers and libraries, and all of them are installed on the server.
User can choose different tool sets by running different scripts, which exports different environment variable values such as include paths and compilers.
User needs to run cleartool to mount the repository.
Developers develop in Eclipse and have two options:
SSH into the server and run Eclipse through with X11 tunneling.
Install Eclipse locally on their Windows machine and invoke builds from the SSH terminal.
Now:
Problem with #1 is that Eclipse operations (typing, content assist, etc) are extremely laggy.
Problem with #2 is that the developers need to go through extra hoops to build their code.
This is what I have tried:
Set up Remote System Explorer, which allows remote editing of files and remote running of the compiler:
How to build a c++ project on a remote computer in Eclipse?
This approach works perfectly for files that do not need special environment variable values and mounting of Clearcase repository, but I could not figure out how to get all of these things to integrate.
It would be great if someone can let me know how I can direct RSE to run a script (may be different per project) to set the environment variables and to run the cleartool commands to mount the repository so that it can locate the files.
The cleartool command arguments would be different per user for setting up a particular view.
Some extra info that may help:
I have root access to the development server
The Clearcase filesystem is mapped to a drive on the Windows machine
Thanks in advance for saving me hours of frustration dealing with a slow network!
==================
Additional detail per comments:
- The VOB storage is located locally on the Linux server. We would SSH to the server and start Eclipse there, therefore the delay should not be due to dynamic vs snapshot view and GUI performance seems to be the real problem.
- We also mount the same view on Windows by using Region Synchronizer. When running the local copy of Eclipse installed on Windows, there is no performance problems.
So this question can probably be solved by answering either question:
1. How to improve X11 performance such that development on Linux will suffice?
2. How to set up Windows Eclipse to perform all the steps mentioned above when building projects?
I came here a similar question to your part two, but alas, no one has answered it. However, I have an answer to your part one: https://www.nomachine.com/. It speeds up X11 forwarding considerably.
I'm currently working on a server-side product which is a bit complex to deploy on a new server, which makes it an ideal candidate for testing out in a VM. We are already using Hudson as our CI system, and I would really like to be able to deploy a virtual machine image with the latest and greatest software as a build artifact.
So, how does one go about doing this exactly? What VM software is recommended for this purpose? How much scripting needs to be done to accomplish this? Are there any issues in particular when using Windows 2003 Server as the OS here?
Sorry to deny anyone an accepted answer here, but based on further research (thanks to your answers!), I've found a better solution and wanted to summarize what I've found.
First, both VirtualBox and VMWare Server are great products, and since both are free, each is worth evaluating. We've decided to go with VMWare Server, since it is a more established product and we can get support for it should we need. This is especially important since we are also considering distributing our software to clients as a VM instead of a special server installation, assuming that the overhead from the VMWare Player is not too high. Also, there is a VMWare scripting interface called VIX which one can use to directly install files to the VM without needing to install SSH or SFTP, which is a big advantage.
So our solution is basically as follows... first we create a "vanilla" VM image with OS, nothing else, and check it into the repository. Then, we write a script which acts as our installer, putting the artifacts created by Hudson on the VM. This script should have interfaces to copy files directly, over SFTP, and through VIX. This will allow us to continue distributing software directly on the target machine, or through a VM of our choice. This resulting image is then compressed and distributed as an artifact of the CI server.
Regardless of the VM software (I can recommend VirtualBox, too) I think you are looking at the following scenario:
Build is done
CI launches virtual machine (or it is always running)
CI uses scp/sftp to upload build into VM over the network
CI uses the ssh (if available on target OS running in VM) or other remote command execution facility to trigger installation in the VM environment
VMWare Server is free and a very stable product. It also gives you the ability to create snapshots of the VM slice and rollback to previous version of your virtual machine when needed. It will run fine on Win 2003.
In terms of provisioning new VM slices for your builds, you can simply copy and past the folder that contains the VMWare files, change the SID and IP of the new VM and you have a new machine. Takes 15 minutes depending on the size of your VM slice. No scripting required.
If you use VirtualBox, you'll want to look into running it headless, since it'll be on your server. Normally, VirtualBox runs as a desktop app, but it's possible to start VMs from the commandline and access the virtual machine over RDP.
VBoxManage startvm "Windows 2003 Server" -type vrdp
We are using Jenkins + Vagrant + Chef for this scenario.
So you can do the following process:
Version control your VM environment using vagrant provisioning scripts (Chef or Puppet)
Build your system using Jenkins/Hudson
Run your Vagrant script to fetch the last stable release from CI output
Save the VM state to reuse in future.
Reference:
vagrantup.com
I'd recommend VirtualBox. It is free and has a well-defined programming interface, although I haven't personally used it in automated build situations.
Choosing VMWare is currently NOT a bad choice.
However,
Just like VMWare gives support for VMWare server, SUN gives support for VirtualBOX.
You can also accomplish this task using VMWare Studio, which is also free.
The basic workflow is this:
1. Create an XML file that describes your virtual machine
2. Use studio to create the shell.
3. Use VMWare server to provision the virtual machine.
Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 11 years ago.
Improve this question
Trying to setup an SSH server on Windows Server 2003. What are some good ones? Preferably open source. I plan on using WinSCP as a client so a server which supports the advanced features implemented by that client would be great.
I've been using Bitvise SSH Server and it's really great. From install to administration it does it all through a GUI so you won't be putting together a sshd_config file. Plus if you use their client, Tunnelier, you get some bonus features (like mapping shares, port forwarding setup up server side, etc.) If you don't use their client it will still work with the Open Source SSH clients.
It's not Open Source and it costs $39.95, but I think it's worth it.
UPDATE 2009-05-21 11:10: The pricing has changed. The current price is $99.95 per install for commercial, but now free for non-commercial/personal use. Here is the current pricing.
I agree that cygwin/OpenSSH is the best choice, but its setup can be involved to say the least. Here is a document to get you started though: Installing OpenSSH
I've been using Bitvise SSH Server for a number of years. It is a wonderful product and it is easy to setup and maintain. It gives you great control over how users connect to the server with support for security groups.
copssh - OpenSSH for Windows
http://www.itefix.no/i2/copssh
Packages essential Cygwin binaries.
OpenSSH is a contender. Looks like it hasn't been updated in a while though.
It's the de facto choice in my opinion. And yes, running under Cygwin is really the nicest method.
VanDyke VShell is the best Windows SSH Server I've ever worked with. It is kind of expensive though ($250). If you want a free solution, freeSSHd works okay. The CYGWIN solution is always an option, I've found, however, that it is a lot of work & overhead just to get SSH.
You can run OpenSSH on Cygwin, and even install it as a Windows service.
I once used it this way to easily add backups of a Unix system - it would rsync a bunch of files onto the Windows server, and the Windows server had full tape backups.