How to setup an apache web server with PHP using vagrant and chef-solo

Note to self.

I will change this post in the future to cover the entire stack installation. but for now lets get this apache server running. and also in the next version i will write about how to do this much easily using librarian.

Steps followed:

1. create the project folder

2. create the Vagrantfile inside it using the command 'vagrant init'.

3. update your Vagrantfile to use the correct base box, share the correct folders and configure the port mapping

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

  config.vm.box = "ubuntu_precise64"

  config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |vb|

    vb.customize ["setextradata", :id, "VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/v-root", "1"]

    vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--memory", "2048"]

  end

  config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 6001

  config.vm.synced_folder "prototypev2/", "/var/www/prototypev2", :extra => "dmode=777,fmode=777"

  

  config.vm.synced_folder "chefrepo/", "/var/chefrepo", :extra => "dmode=777,fmode=777"

  config.vm.provision :shell, :inline => <<-eot font="">

    apt-get install -y build-essential

    gem install chef --version 11.4.0 --no-rdoc --no-ri --conservative

  EOT

end

4. inside the chefrepo folder make sure you have the solo.rb file, config.json file and a folder for cookbooks

5. solo.rb should read like:

file_cache_path "/var/chefrepo"

cookbook_path "/var/chefrepo/cookbooks"

6. execute 'vagrant up' from host machine and login to the box using 'vagrant ssh''

7. cd /var/chefrepo/cookbooks

8. download php and apache cookbooks using knife utility:

knife cookbook site download php

tar -xvf php-1.3.14.tar.gz

knife cookbook site download apache2

tar -xvf apache2-1.9.0.tar.gz

rm *.gz

8.1 download apt cookbook, this is needed as the first thing on the runlist so it will always execute a 'apt-get update' before the installation process begins

knife cookbook site download apt

tar -xvf apt-2.3.8.tar.gz

9. create a new cookbook for installing and configuring web server

sudo knife cookbook create appserver -o /var/chefrepo/cookbooks

10. update metadata.rb inside appserver folder, don't forget to include the dependencies

depends "apache2"

depends "php"

11. download all dependencies mentioned on php and apache cookbooks (you can get them by looking at metadata.rb of each cookbook)

build-essential

xml

mysql

yum-epel

windows

iis

iptables

logrotate

pacman

chef_handler

yum

openssl

12. create a template for apache site config in appserver/templates/default/ folder named apache_site_config.erb

        ServerAdmin ops@example.com

        DocumentRoot /var/www/prototypev2/

       

                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

                AllowOverride All

                Order allow,deny

                allow from all

       

        ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

        LogLevel warn

        CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

        ServerSignature On

13 update cookbooks/appserver/recipes/default.rb as below:

include_recipe "apache2"

include_recipe "php"

include_recipe "apache2::mod_php5"

apache_site "default" do

  enable false

end

execute "change permission web" do

  command "chmod -R 0777 /var/www/prototypev2 "

  action :run

end

web_app 'prototypev2' do

  template 'apache_site_conf.erb'

end

14. update the runlist variable of config.json which lets chef know the recipes it need to run

{

  "run_list": ["recipe[apt]","recipe[appserver]"]

}

15. run chef solo

cd /var/chefrepo

sudo chef-solo -c solo.rb -j config.json