I would like to build an 'ideal' lamp development stack.
Dual Server (Virtualised, ESX)
Apache / PHP on one, Databases (MySQL, PgSQL, etc) on the other.
User (Developer) Manageable mini environments, or instance.
Each developer instance shares the top level config (available modules and default config etc)
A developer should have control over their apache and php version for each project.
A developer might be able to change minor settings, ie magicquotes on for legacy code.
Each project would determine its database provider in its code
The idea is that it is one administrate-able server that I can control, and provide globally configured things like APC, Memcached, XDebug etc. Then by moving into subsets for each project, i can allow my users to quickly control their environments for various projects.
Essentially I'm proposing the typical system of a developer running their own stack on their own machine, but centralised. In this way I'd hope to avoid problems like Cross OS code problems, database inconsistencies, slightly different installs producing bugs etc.
I'm happy to manage this in custom builds from source, but if at all possible it would be great to have a large portion of it managed with some sort of package management. We typically use CentOS, so yum?
Has anyone ever built anything like this before? Is there something turnkey that is similar to what I have described? Are there any useful guides I should be reading in order to build something like this?
OK, the way we were running development LAMP setup at my previous job, was like this. A single server running both MySQL and Apache. Each developer is assigned an IP address on the server (the machine is running multiple IPs on the same interface, all IPs are on the same subnet), so each developer can have at least one IP-based virtual host and as many name based as they want (our web site used SSL, so we needed separate IPs, wigthout SSL, you can get away with a single IP and name based vhosts). We had local DNS server serving wildcard A records for each developer in this manner *.john.dev.company IN A 10.1.1.123, where 10.1.1.123 was IP address assigned to John. This way John could define as many name based vhosts as he wanted and they would all get resolved correctly as long as they all ended in john.dev.company (like project1.john.dev.company). Each developer had their own apache config file with their virtual hosts in it and we used Include directive to pull all these files into the main Apache config. The permissions were set, so these config files would be editable by respective developers and each developer had a soft link to their config in their home directory. Also, every developer was allowed to use sudo to restart Apache. The downside of this setup was that once in a while a particular dev would crash entire server by screwing up their config file. We used common database, since everyone was working on a single project, but it shouldn't be difficult to setup multiple individual databases.
My take on the issue, i don't think it covers all of your requirements, but it's pretty close:
Have a CentOS server with LAMP stack ( yum install apache2 mysql php etc. ) - or 2 servers one httpd and one mysqld
For n developers have n folders with n virtual hosts www.developer-n.com on the host that runst the Apache server
Each developer mounts it's server folder (say //192.168.0.1/home/developer-n/www) on the local machine via CIFS in the local-station's /etc/fstab and edits the files from local machine yet runs them on the (unique) server
Each developer mini-environment is tweaked via .htaccess
Related
Running Windows 11, 64 bit I need to install multiple instances of XAMPP on my external Hard disk. The drive will always be associated with the letter Z.
The purpose is to learn XAMPP including what the stack is made of i.e., Apache, MariaDB/MySQL, and PHP. Learning route is through various tutorials and online video courses such as:
WordPress Full Course in ONE VIDEO | ZERO to HERO | STEP BY STEP
How To Make A Digital Agency Website From Scratch In 2022 (WordPress And Elementor For Beginners)
These tutorials/courses asks to make projects such as the first is centered around "mywebsite" and the second is "jimakes". In order to do so I was thinking to have one installation of XAMPP at (I am using the Lab as the main folder in the drive Z)
Z:\Lab\xampp\htdocs\mywebsite
Z:\Lab\xampp\htdocs\jimakes
Now I will have 1 XAMPP installation and multiple WordPress installations (The WordPress installtions will be in each of the projects respective folders so that tinkering one WordPress installation does not effect the other).
The problem is following through the 2nd course/tutorial and installing the WordPress theme (jimakes), Astra, I came across problems that required me to change some settings in the .htaccess file and php.ini files which I messed up. This resulted in messing up the "mywebsite". This required me to uninstall everything and do a clean reinstall of XAMPP and WordPress. And that resulting in also removing the htdocs folder. (There is an option of not removing that folder during the uninstall process but I don't want to do that say just to be sure I have a clean reinstall with default settings).
Now I am thinking to have multiple XAMPP installations and a single WordPress installation such as
Z:\Lab\mywebsite\xampp\htdocs\PUBLIC_HTML
Z:\Lab\jimakes\xampp\htdocs\PUBLICC_HTML
The purpose is two fold. First I can happily chip away with messing everything up in one project and it won't effect the other. The second I am trying to replicate a real hosting live server from one of the server providers such as Go Daddy or Host Gator as much as possible so that migrating from the local development environment to the production one is as pain less as possible when I move on to real projects.
Now to cut the story short and trying to catch the river in a cup I would ask
To create a exact replica of the hosting providers environment on a local development environment with the aim of firstly learning technologies such as PHP, MariaDB/MySQL, WordPress and later on exporting real life project from the local development to hosting environment with the confidence that all I need to do is move the files (FTP via FileZilla?). This cannot be achieved since if I am not wrong, one can never install cPanel locally. Secondly who has the time to consider in so many variables for example you cannot create a new database or user using phpMyAdmin in a hosting account but you can on a local environment.
WHM & Cpanel cannot create database
What needs to be changed for once and once only. You will notice that I have changed the htdocs to PUBLIC_HTML as the root document folder (Is it same as the Server Folder?). The aim is to actually learn PHP and WordPress and MySQL without being bothered about why it's not working. I know why it's not working itself is an important part of learning but it just muddles the waters since your objective is to learn the technologies and not why it's not working (The why it's not working comes later, don't ask me why, I am too dumb to learn two things at a time).
I tried installing Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP manually without using XAMPP. This resulted in learning about more about installations and errors and how to fix them and blah blah blah rather than actually learning PHP, MariaDB/MySQL and WordPress. Exactly the thing that I was trying to avoid. Some would argue you cannot learn one without the other but I already have HTML and CSS under my belt (I know, I know, JavaScript, I will get there) and again the purpose is to move to the backend and save time by avoiding and worrying about how to fix them errors (took me two hours to figure out why my php manual installation was not working. Turns out one needs to set PATH in system environment variables in Windows 11)
PHP Not Executable in Command Prompt Windows, Environment Variable is set
Why can't I just use a hosting provider production environment? Than why XAMPP is there?
You have a lot of asks here, you shoould split them to individual asks, i Will help you with the Title Ask.
Is as common task have into dev environment many projects, but you can run all with a single instance and a single port, such as 80 in dev machine.
You can set Many Virtual Hosts so istead of use default http://localhost you can create a better host for each project, Eg:
http://project1.local
http://project2.local
and proceed with development with no pain, here a tutorial, teaching how you can create this env.
https://www.wdb24.com/how-to-setup-multiple-virtual-hosts-on-xampp/
I was enjoining about getting a Network Attached Storage (NAS) so that I can work on dev sites from both my desktop and my laptop without duplicating files and always having the most current file (just in case I forget to save). My question is if I put sites on there that uses php, would I be able to run the sites off of the NAS as I would with MAMP / WAMP? Or would I still need something else to make that work?
The point of a NAS is to share files over a network. This is usually done via Windows File & Print Sharing (aka Samba aka SMB) which is supported on most platforms.
Some NAS devices might allow you to run a web server (particularly if you can install custom firmware), but it is a poor choice of platform to run anything remotely complex in terms of web server stacks.
You can certainly store your development files on a NAS, and then access them from webservers running in both your development environments.
… but that said, I'd look at using version control software (Git would be my preference), keeping your repository on the NAS and getting into the habit of saving, committing and pushing. It makes things more manageable in the long run. (You could also use a service like Bitbucket or Github and dispense with the local NAS entirely).
You could also go a step further and run a server with CI software on it that monitors your repository and automatically pulls updates from it, runs your automated tests, and then updates a local test server.
I am assuming you use windows(it's easier to do it in mac i think) with wamp what you can do is mount a network drive to w:\ let's say. Then create a virtual host that points to a folder in W:\ drive.
With mac all you need to do is mount the remote folder share to your mamp directory and all should work as you want.
Though personally I think this is a terrible idea and would much rather suggest you to use a VCS(version control system) to share code between multiple places. Lots of them are designed with this problem in mind. And it provides nice history about your code at the same time. If you want to do some research look at GIT(the most popular, currently) bitbucket has free private repositories. you can look into what a VCS can do here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control
I want to run different web app on different ports on same server, I have a apache php server running on a Linux machine. How can I achieve this ? and when I Google I stumble upon 'tomcat', what is this ? I am a noob, so please forgive if that is a stupid question.
Check the apache manual for the VirtualHost directive. It'll explain everything.
One thing to remember (it caught me out first time) - if you use virtual hosts, you have to define a virtual host for the default page too.
Don't worry about Tomcat at the moment. If you don't know what it is, you don't need it yet.
Step 1: Install the Tomcat files
Download Tomcat 4.1 or 5.5, and unzip it into an appropriate directory. I usually put it in /usr/local, so it ends up in a directory called /usr/local/apache-tomcat-5.5.17 (5.5.17 being the current version as of this writing), and make a symlink named /usr/local/tomcat to that directory. When later versions come out, I can unzip them and relink, leaving the older version in case things don’t work out (which rarely if ever happens, but I’m paranoid).
Step 2: Make directories for each instance
For each instance of Tomcat you’re going to run, you’ll need a directory that will be CATALINA_BASE. For example, you might make them /var/tomcat/serverA and /var/tomcat/serverB.
In each of these directories you need the following subdirectories: conf, logs, temp, webapps, and work.
Put a server.xml and web.xml file in the conf directory. You can get these from the conf directory of the directory where you put the tomcat installation files, although of course you should tighten up your server.xml a bit.
The webapps directory is where you’ll put the web applications you want to run on the particular instance of Tomcat.
I like to have the Tomcat manager webapp installed on each instance, so I can play with the webapps, and see how many active sessions there are. See my instructions for configuring the Tomcat manager webapp.
So we are pushing to create good processes in our office. I work in a web shop that has been doing web sites for over a decade. And we don't use version control. I know! It's bad, not my fault. I'm the guy with a SoftE background pushing for this at a minimum.
The tech lead has been looking into it. We all use Mac workstations and mostly use Coda for editing since it is a great IDE. It has SVN support built in but expects it to work on local files. We're trying to explore mounting the web directory as a local network drive with an SFTP tool.
We are a LAMP shop, BTW.
I am wondering what the model is here. I think we have typically would checkout the whole site to our local machine where we have apache running and then test it there? This isn't how we work yet, we do everything on the server. We've looked at checking things in and out, but some files are owned by apache and the ownerships change when I check them in, because I'm not apache.
I just want to know a way to do this that works given my circumstances. Would be nice to not have to run apache locally.
You might want to checkout the Coda mailing list and ask there. Lots of Coda enthusiasts there with specific experience.
If you don't want to have to run locally could make Apache on your server run a copy of the site for every developer, on a different port per person, and then mount those web-roots to the local macs and make that the working directory. If you're a small shop that's not hard to manage. I find that pretty easy to set up and saves a lot of resources on the local machines. The one-site-per-person helps to avoid conflicts with multiple people working on files at the same time.
What I'd additionally recommend is to have a script that gets the latest changes from SVN and deploys the entire site to the production server when you're ready. You could have that script change permissions on appropriate files/folders as needed to be owned by Apache. The idea once you're using source control is to never manually edit the production files -- you should have something that deploys it from SVN for you.
A few notes:
Take a look at MacFuse / MacFusion (the latter is the application, the former is the library behind it) to mount remote directories via SSH / FTP as local ones.
Allow your developers to check out into their local environment (with their own LAMP stack if they're savvy), or look into a shared dev environment with individual jails. This way your developers can run their own LAMP stack (which you could deploy for them on the machine) without interfering with others.
The idea being, let them use a workflow that works best for them, to minimize the pain in adapting to this change (if change management might be an issue!)
Just as an example, we have a shared dev server where jails are created with a single command for new developers. They have a full LAMP stack ready to go, and we can upgrade and re-deploy jails easily to keep software up to date. Developers have individual control to add custom settings / extensions if they need it for work, while the sys admins have the ability to reset everything when someone accidently breaks their environment :)
Those who prefer not to use jails, and are able to, manage their own local environments (typically through Macports or MAMP).
I've read a number of topics in the same sort of ballpark as this one, but in all honesty I'm still not exactly sure on the best approach (as a starting point). I am a solo developer in a small office and I have around 30 websites which are hosted on a linux VPS. I want to start using using version control (probably SVN) and also set up a staging server. At the moment, I do development either locally on my machine before using FTP to upload to the live server, or ocassionally for small changes I edit the remote files directly, which is not an ideal approach.
I'm looking for some guidance on how to improve my development environment. I imagine I should be installing SVN on the web server, which would then allow me to check out versions to my local machine (which would also require SVN i think). Also, if I want to set up a staging server, should I just set up subdomains for each of the live websites, then use these subdomains for showing clients changes to the site before making them live?
Hope this makes sense!
This is what we do at work:
We have a staging server running Apache and a Subversion server. We have a post commit hook that updates a working copy in the htdocs directory, that way, when a developer commits something it automatically gets updated on the staging server, so everyone can see the latest code.
On the client's production servers (the ones we can control) we have the Subversion client installed and the website is a working copy. When we need to update the live site we login to a shell and run svn up. If you do something like this, make sure to limit access to the .svn directories, either with .htaccess files or from the main Apache config.
We have a custom app that manages the projects, but that is only because we're lazy and don't want to setup each project by hand, the app creates the necessary directories and working copies. You could write a quick script to do this.
We never, ever, edit files via FTP on the live site. All in all we have been using this setup for almost 2 years and aside from the occasional conflict on the staging server, we never have had any problems.
You can actually install the SVN server on your local machine, which I would recommend in lieu of installing it on the web server (assuming you make backups). The easiest thing to do, since it’s only you using it, would be to use the file:// protocol, but using svnserve is a little more robust, and the preferred method if you want to take the time to do it.
#Michael, I disagree - I would say it's better to install on the linux vps, especially if you are already paying for the hosting service. I find it very helpful to be able to browse and download stuff from my svn repo wherever I am, from whatever computer I'm on.
#nicky, I started with svn (and version control) several years ago and I took baby steps which made it easier to tackle.
If I had to do it over again, I'd read the svn book to start with. The book is very well laid out and didn't take more than 1-2 days to plow thru.
While you're reading, install svn on your linux vps with an apache front end.
Once you have that up, pick one of your websites and import it into svn. This is how I structure my svn repo. For example, say my repo is hosted at http://mysvn.mydomain.com/svn/:
mywebsite1
- trunk
- tags
- branches
mywebsite2
- trunk
- tags
- branches
Don't worry about creating the perfect structure. It's pretty easy to re-organize especially when you're starting out. After you import a few projects into svn, you'll start to get a feel for which projects should have their own "trunk/tags/branches" dir structure and which can be combined.
For creating test environments, I do exactly what you describe. I use build scripts to checkout from svn and download files into dirs that are mapped to subdomains like "test.clientsite.com" (I work primarily in java and use ant and maven, but I think you can use whatever scripting language you're familiar with).
Once you get used to version control, you'll never go back, good luck!