Create vagrant box for RescueMe

This procedure describes the creation of a Vagrant box for use with VirtualBox. Follow it precisely as described. There are many pitfalls that will make the box useless or difficult to use.

Prerequisites

Ensure that both VirtualBox and Vagrant is installed on your machine.

Create Virtual Machine

We are currently using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in production. Developers should do the same for stability reasons.

• Download server install CD (*.iso file)
• Create a new Virtual Machine with 512MB ram and 100GB Disk with dynamically allocated differencing storage
• Give it the name rescueme-precise64
• Enable network adapter 1 and attach it to NAT (Vagrant uses this to connect the first time).
• Attach server install CD

Install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Boot the machine an follow the instructions. Select following values when prompted:

• Default user: vagrant with password vagrant (convention)
• Keyboard: English (US)
• Locale: US
• Timezone: London (GMT)

Select following additional software when promped:

• OpenSSH
• LAMP Server, MySQL root password: vagrant

Post-install configuration

Set root password to vagrant (convention) with:

sudo passwd

Ensure admin group exists with:

groupadd -r admin

Add user vagrant to admin group with

usermod -a -G admin vagrant

Enable sudo without password for user vagrant (convension)

• Open /etc/sudoers with: sudo visudo
• Add following defaults if not exist: Default env_reset, Defaults exempt_group=admin
• Change line admin ALL=(ALL) to admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
• Save changes with CTRL+X and Enter

Prepare to install Guest Additions

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential dkms

Install Guest Additions (required to make shared folders work properly)

• Goto "Devices" > "Install Guest Additions" in the virtual machine window.
• Mount the CD-ROM with

sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

• Install guest additions with

sudo sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

• Implement workaround for bug in VirtualBox 4.3.10 which prevents shared folders to work

sudo ln -s /opt/VBoxGuestAdditions-4.3.10/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions /usr/lib/VBoxGuestAdditions

Enable insecure key-based authentication for SSH (convention)

mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 0700 ~/.ssh
cd ~/.ssh
wget --no-check-certificate "https://raw.github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub"
cat vagrant.pub >> authorized_keys
chmod 0600 authorized_keys

Tweek sshd to prevent DNS resolution (speed up logins)

sudo echo "UseDNS no" >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config

• Add -u0 to SSH_OPTS in /etc/default/ssh

Disable grub startup menu (speed up logins) by setting

GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0

in /etc/default/grub and apply changes with

sudo update-grub

Add NFS client with (faster)

sudo apt-get -y install nfs-common

Implement workarounds for known networking problems

• Add following lines to script /etc/rc.local before exit 0

# Make sure eth0 is working. This works around Vagrant issue #391
dhclient eth0

Remove persistent rules

sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
sudo mkdir /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
sudo rm /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules

Remove leftover leases (must be performed after every boot)

sudo rm -rf /dev/.udev/
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dhcp/*

Add RescueMe dependencies

sudo apt-get -y install php5-cli php5-curl php5-intl php-gettext

Edit PHP settings

• open /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and enter

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;; All runtime environments 
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
short_open_tag = 1
date.timezone = <select one from official list>
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;; Development runtime environment 
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
phar.readonly = 0
; RescueMe build scripts requires 'phar://' includes to be enabled if suhosin is enabled
suhosin.executor.include.whitelist = phar

Add XDebug support

sudo apt-get -y install php5-xdebug

• open /etc/php5/conf.d/xdebug.ini and append

xdebug.remote_enable=on
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_connect_back=on
xdebug.remote_port=9000
xdebug.remote_autostart=on
xdebug.idekey=rescue-me

Enable Apache modules

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Configure Apache2

sudo nano /etc/apache2/conf.d/fqdn

• insert

ServerName localhost

Configure RescueMe site

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/rescueme

• insert

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
  ServerName rescueme
  DocumentRoot /var/www/rescueme
  <Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
  </Directory>
  <Directory /var/www/rescueme>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride Options
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
  </Directory>
  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/rescueme-error.log
  LogLevel warn
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/rescueme-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Install development tool myphpadmin

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Follow the instructions. Enter vagrant for all passwords.

Compress current image size to save space in the final image (takes several minutes)

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/EMPTY bs=1M
sudo rm -f /EMPTY

Package virtual machine into a vagrant box

The next step is to package the virtual machine into a Vagrant box

vagrant package --base rescueme-precise64

which will output package.box in working directory.

Test the box

# Import box
vagrant box add vagrant-precise64-rescueme /path/to/package.box
# Create test project
mkdir -p ~/vagrant-precise64-rescueme-test
cd ~/vagrant-precise64-rescueme-test
vagrant init vagrant-precise64-rescueme
# Start server
vagrant up
# Login server
vagrant ssh
# Remove project
vagrant destroy
rm -rf .vagrant Vagrantfile
vagrant box remove vagrant-precise64-rescueme

which should be performed without errors of any kind.

Deploy vagrant box to Atlas

Follow this guide