lampbase

A base cookbook for provisioning a base LAMP-stack, primarily suited for local development environments served by Vagrant.

Compatible with RHEL and Debian platform families (including CentOS, Ubuntu and Amazon Linux).

Provides the following software:

• Apache2
• PHP5
• MySQL
• memcached
• Self-signed SSL wildcard certificate

Vagrant Installation

1. Ensure you have the following dependencies installed:

   • Vagrant

   • Chef-DK

   • vagrant-berkshelf plugin

       $ vagrant plugin install vagrant-berkshelf
     

   • OPTIONAL: vagrant-omnibus plugin (ensures Chef is installed on the Guest OS)

       $ vagrant plugin install vagrant-omnibus
     

     Note: This step is required if using a box that does not distribute with Chef.

   • OPTIONAL: vagrant-vbguest plugin (ensures VirtualBox Guest Additions is up-to-date on the Guest OS)

       $ vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest
     

2. Download the template Berksfile and Vagrantfile into your application:

    $ cd path/to/my/app
    $ wget https://raw.github.com/apancutt/lampbase/master/{Vagrantfile,Berksfile}.dist
    $ mv Vagrantfile{.dist,} && mv Berksfile{.dist,}
   

3. Open Vagrantfile and modify set the app_name parameter. Feel free to bastardize this file as deemed necessary.

4. Boot your VM:

    $ vagrant up --provision
   

5. Add the configured private IP (default 10.100.10.101 to your Host VM):

    10.100.10.101 myapp.localhost.dev
   

Trusting the Self-Signed Certificate

By 'trusting' the CA certificate on your Host machine, you will be able to navigate to your app over HTTPS without being nagged by your browser.

1. Download the CA certificate

2. Depending on your Host OS, usually you can just double click this file to add it to your trusted certificates. If not, check Google.

Using your own CA certificate

Perhaps you already have a CA certificate that you use to self-sign SSL certificates. Or perhaps you're concerned about using publicly-provided keys. Either way, you can create and use your own CA certificates to sign the SSL certificate used by the vhost.

Generating a CA key/certificate pair

Skip this step if you already have a CA key and certificate.

1. Download the template configuration file:

    $ wget -O openssl.cnf https://raw.github.com/apancutt/lampbase/master/templates/default/openssl.cnf.erb
   

2. Generate the CA key:

    $ openssl genrsa -out ca.key 4096
   

3. Create the CA certificate:

    $ openssl req -sha256 -new -x509 -days 36524 -key ca.key -out ca.crt -config openssl.cnf -extensions v3_req_ca -subj "/CN=localhost"
   

Provisioning the server with your own CA

1. Create a new local cookbook:

   1. Create the cookbook folders:

       $ mkdir -p lampbase-local/files/default
      

   2. Create the cookbook Berksfile:

       $ echo 'source "https://supermarket.getchef.com"' > lampbase-local/Berksfile
       $ echo 'metadata' >> lampbase-local/Berksfile
      

   3. Configure the cookbook metadata:

       $ echo 'name "lampbase-local"' > lampbase-local/metadata.rb
       $ echo 'depends "lampbase"' >> lampbase-local/metadata.rb
      

   4. Copy your CA key and certificate into the cookbook:

       $ cp /path/to/my/ca.key lampbase-local/files/default/ca.key
       $ cp /path/to/my/ca.crt lampbase-local/files/default/ca.crt
      

   Note: You could have used berks cookbook lampbase-local to have Berkshelf generate the cookbook skeleton for you; but that's too much for what we need here.

2. Add your new cookbook to your application's Berksfile:

    echo 'cookbook "lampbase-local", path: "./lampbase-local"' >> Berksfile
   

3. Configure the location of the CA files in your Vagrantfile:

    lampbase: {
        app_name: app_name,
        # Configure lampbase to obtain the CA files from your lampbase-local cookbook
        ca_key_file_cookbook: "lampbase-local",
        ca_crt_file_cookbook: "lampbase-local"
    }
   

4. Build it!

   • From scratch:

       $ vagrant up --provision
     

   • Existing box:

     You will first need to remove the existing SSL certificates else the provisioner will skip creating SSL certificates.

       $ vagrant ssh
       $ sudo su root -c 'rm -f /etc/apache2/ssl/*'
       $ exit
       $ vagrant reload --provision