MAX PaaS VMs for Development and Server
A better system provisioning workflow with Chef and Vagrant.
Chef and Vagrant represents a huge improvement in time, efficiency and management of developing, running and deploying projects.
You should already have VirtualBox, Chef and Vagrant installed and Configured. You will also need to install a ruby version manager (RVM/rbenv) and the following gems: veewee, berkshelf and bundler (optional). Hopefully the following will explain the what and why being using these tools. note that as of writing veewee requires ruby 1.9.2 and berkshelf requires ruby 1.9.3.
Chef is a powerful tool and that power is provided through a few chef-isms. Recipes, attributes, LWRPs, cookbooks, roles, nodes, data bags.
Berkshelf provides the solution to writing a cookbook in isolation, and lets you pull in 3rd party cookbooks from any location whether that be Opscode, a git repository or even your local filesystem. When you pull in those dependencies, they stay separate from your cookbook just as with ruby gems, or npm.
To get a custom box ready to be provisioned by Vagrant, there are a few hoops to jump through in terms of setting up software (chef, ssh, nfs, a vagrant user etc.). This can all be set up manually, but that is not very repeatable and does not feel very chef-y.
Veewee takes all the pain out of this process, with a couple of commands you tell Veewee what OS you want to install, and fulfils all the prerequisites necessary for Vagrant (or VMWare, KVM, Parallels for that matter). The instructions for Veewee are well documented in the repository.
With Vagrant and VirtualBox previously installed:
$ git clone https://github.com/jhulick/vm-work
$ cd vm-work/vagrant-max-paas-devl-ubuntu-12.04-x86_32
$ cd bootstrap/max-paas # mkdir these if they do not exist
$ git clone http://gitlab.rcs.cm.netspective.com/max-paas/max-paas-harness.git
$ git clone http://gitlab.rcs.cm.netspective.com/max-paas/max-forms.git
$ git clone http://gitlab.rcs.cm.netspective.com/max-paas/max-grids.git
$ git clone http://gitlab.rcs.cm.netspective.com/max-paas/max-navigation.git
$ cd ../.. # back to vagrant-max-paas-devl-ubuntu-12.04-x86_32
$ vagrant up
$ vagrant up
$ vagrant ssh
Install XFCE
$ sudo apt-get install xfce4
Install Gnome
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
Install GDM, which will let you boot directly into a graphical environment (or lightDM)
$ sudo apt-get install gdm
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm
From /home/vagrant
$ sudo chown vagrant:vagrant .config
$ sudo chown vagrant:vagrant .ICEauthority
Stop and update Vagrant file
$ exit
$ vagrant halt
Modify the Vagrant file, in the provider block
## Uncomment lines below for Gnome settings ##
vb.gui = true
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--graphicscontroller", "vboxvga"]
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--accelerate3d", "on"]
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--ioapic", "on"]
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--vram", "128"]
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--hwvirtex", "on"]
Reload the Vagrant file
$ vagrant reload
For share folders to work properly between your Windows Host and the VM, you will need to install the Vagrant WinNFSd plugin.
$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-winnfsd
To activate NFS for vagrant see: http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/synced-folders/nfs.html
The plugin extends vagrant in the way that you can use NFS also with windows. So the following hint on the vagrant documentation page is no longer true.
Windows users: NFS folders do not work on Windows hosts. Vagrant will ignore your request for NFS synced folders on Windows.
Further details can be found here: http://www.jankowfsky.com/blog/2013/11/28/nfs-for-vagrant-under-windows/
With Vagrant and VirtualBox previously installed:
$ git clone https://github.com/jhulick/vm-work
$ cd vm-work/vagrant-max-paas-server-centos65-x86_32
$ vagrant up
- Nginx
- Java 7
- Tomcat
- CouchDB 1.5.0
- Erlang ESL
- Lucene
- Elasticsearch
- Ant
- Maven
- NVM
- Node.js 10
- Git
- Tmux