- Vagrant - A set of tools for automating and controlling Virtual Machines (VMs)
- Virtual Box - for hosting and running those Virtual Machines
- Scotch/Box - a flexible preconfigured LAMP VM for Vagrant (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP)
The Ludum Dare website doesn't run LAMP, but instead runs a similar bleeding-edge configuration (Linux+OpenLiteSpeed+MariaDB+PHP7). In the future we may switch to a custom VM that better mirrors what is run on the servers. For details, check out JuiceBox.
The key thing to understand about working with Vagrant boxes (VMs) like Scotch/Box is that Vagrant boxes are temporary. Though you can connect to the Virtual Machine and install whatever you like, Vagrant boxes work best when you install things via setup scripts. That way, they can be nuked from orbit whenever you like, giving you fresh/clean install whenever you want one.
In the case of Scotch/Box, the important files (i.e. the website) lives on your local machine. The Scotch/Box VM is pre-configured with a share to those files. You simply edit the files in the www folder, refresh your browser to see the changes, and commit/push your changes to your GIT repository once you're happy with them. Easy.
Since the files are NOT on the VM, you can safely vagrant destroy whenever you need to update DairyBox.
You're running a fake computer on your computer. That fake computer runs Linux. We installed everything for you, and if you break it, you can push a button (Vagrant) to get a brand new fake computer. You can destroy and create that fake computer as many times as you want.
Once set up, DairyBox will serve web pages to you. All you have to do is edit files and refresh your browser any time you change something. And if it ever stops working, you can blow up your fake computer using the button (Vagrant) and get a new one (though you probably just need to restart it).
We call that editing, clicking, and blowing up computers the workflow.
We call the stuff you download and install the toolchain.
ALWAYS install the latest versions. If something ever stops working, make sure you are running the absolute latest version.
-
Install GIT: http://git-scm.com/downloads
-
Install Virtual Box: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads (***)
-
Install Vagrant: http://vagrantup.com/ (***)
-
Install Vagrant-Exec plugin:
vagrant plugin install vagrant-exec
If you're an Ubuntu/Debian user, DON'T INSTALL VAGRANT AND VIRTUAL BOX USING APT-GET! The repositories for these are VERY out of date. Most Vagrant setup problems on Linux are because you don't have the latest version.
If you're working on DairyBox, and find yourself doing a lot of vagrant up; vagrant destroy; vagrant up's, this plugin will cache packages between destroy's. The trade off is it will take more hard drive space (since it has to keep copies of packages).
vagrant plugin install vagrant-cachier
Clone the DairyBox repo.
EXAMPLE:
git clone https://github.com/ludumdare/dairybox.git ludumdare
where ludumdare is the directory you plan to work out of.
NOTE: DairyBox is the toolchain. For convenience, we use GIT to download and install it. Most people don't need a Fork of DairyBox. Upgrades are MUCH simpler if you don't.
DO NOT do a vagrant up yet. We have one more step...
Initialize a new repository in the www directory, and set the origin to your source repository.
If you just want to try it out, or don't yet have a GitHub account, you can do the following.
cd www
git init
git remote add origin https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare.git
git fetch
git checkout -t origin/master
Alternatively, if you do plan to contribute changes, you should fork the /ludumdare/ludumdare repostiory, and check it out like so:
cd www
git init
git remote add origin https://github.com/MY-USER-NAME-ON-GIT/ludumdare.git
git remote add upstream https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare.git
git fetch
git checkout -t origin/master
Or even better, once you have SSL configured:
cd www
git init
git remote add origin [email protected]:MY-USER-NAME-ON-GIT/ludumdare.git
git remote add upstream https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare.git
git fetch
git checkout -t origin/master
We will be working in the www directory.
Do a vagrant up.
After setup, your server is here: http://192.168.48.48 (www/public). It may take a moment to connect.
If you're running a standard Ludum Dare setup, additional #LDJAM services are here:
- http://192.168.48.48:8080 - static.ldjam.org (
www/public-static) - http://192.168.48.48:8081 - pusher.ldjam.com (
www/public-pusher) - http://192.168.48.48:8082 - theme.ludumdare.com (
www/public-theme) - http://192.168.48.48:8083 - api.ldjam.org (
www/public-api) - http://192.168.48.48:8084 - ldj.am (
www/public-ldj.am) - http://192.168.48.48:8085 - jammer.bio (
www/public-jammer.bio)
Potential future sevices are here:
- http://192.168.48.48:8090 - jam.host (
www/public-jam.host) - http://192.168.48.48:8091 - jammer.tv (
www/public-tv) - http://192.168.48.48:8092 - jamga.me (
www/public-jamga.me) - http://192.168.48.48:8093 - ??? :) (
www/public-scene)
For details on the structure of the Ludum Dare source tree, visit:
https://github.com/ludumdare/ludumdare
From your root working directory (not www).
- Destroy your VM with
vagrant destroy. This shuts down the server and removes the VM. - Pull the latest changes with
git pull -u. - Update your Vagrant boxes (i.e. Scotch/Box) with
vagrant box update. - Initialize a fresh VM with
vagrant up.
vagrant upto initialize, start, or resume a server (after suspending or rebooting)vagrant suspendto put it to sleepvagrant reloadto restart itvagrant haltto shut it down (power button)vagrant destroyto delete the VM (the files in www are fine, but everything else is lost)vagrant sshto connect to the VM with SSH
Things you can run from your shell.
- info.sh - Get information about the VM. IP addresses, etc.
- log.sh - Get the Apache+PHP Log (use PHP function "error_log" to send errors here).
If you do a vagrant ssh, inside your home directory (~), you'll find symlinks to configuration files for the various software run on the webserver.
- ~/php.ini
- ~/apache2.conf
- ~/mysql.conf (file is actually
my.cnf) - ~/memcached.conf (not used)
- ~/redis.conf (not used)
Also, for convenience, there are symlinks to two helpful folders:
- ~/www/ - to the WWW root folder
- ~/vagrant/ - to the Vagrant root folder
These are some extras pre-installed on DairyBox you can access with your browser. Helpful for debugging.
- http://192.168.48.48/dev/utils (
../dev/utils) - apcu.php - Manage APCu state (fast RAM cache) - login: root password: root
- ocp.php - Manage Opcache state (PHP Opcache)
- phpinfo.php - Simple script with a phpinfo() call.
If you want PHPMyAdmin, simply download the latest version and unzip it in to the ../dev/phpmyadmin directory. Access it with:
http://192.168.48.48/dev/phpmyadmin/ - Login: root Password: root
By default, your DairyBox can only be accessed locally. To access it from another machine or device on your network, you need to enable the Public Server.
To do this, remove the # in front of the "public_network" line in your Vagrantfile (/Vagrantfile).
The next time you start your server with vagrant up, you may be prompted which of your Network Interfaces you want to bind (i.e. your Ethernet or your WiFi). Once setup completes, you can use the info script to get information about the server.
./info.sh
The public IP is usually the IP listed under eth2.
Once you know the public IP address, all URLs like the ones above (http://192.168.48.48) can be accessed from your remote devices using the public IP.
??? TODO: Figure out the right way to do this.
Edit your hosts file (/etc/hosts) on the local machine (??), and add an entry for the IPs.
192.168.1.22 publicserver.local
192.168.48.48 localserver.local
http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/82456
You should only enable OpCache if you need to better simulate the active Ludum Dare server environment, or test OpCache aware features. For most developers, it's preferred that your PHP scripts aren't cached. That way, they reload whenever you refresh your browser.
You can clear the OpCache cache and look-up other details using the OCP tool:
http://192.168.48.48/dev/utils/ocp.php
To Enable OpCache, do the following:
TODO
but it's either enable this in php.ini:
opcache.enable=1
or add this:
zend_extension=opcache.so
(or both)
APCu comes pre-configured in DairyBox.
The Ludum Dare website requires APCu. APCu is faster than Memcached (shared data is written directly to RAM instead of being piped over TCP), but is unreliable when it comes to scaling across multiple servers. Data that must be real-time accurate across multiple servers should not be cached by APCu. That said, a lot of Ludum Dare data can safely be wrong and out of date. For example: Changes to data must be read and written to the database, but data fetched by users browsing the website (comments, posts, likes, links, etc) can safely be out-of-date. In practice, the worst case has data out-of-date for a few minutes, but in many cases it wont even be a second.
NOTE: APCu for PHP 7.0 may be less fragile, but we currently run PHP 5.6 on the VM.
For caching advice, see the Development Guide.
You can check what's cached and how much memory is used with the ACPu tool:
http://192.168.48.48/dev/utils/apcu.php
To change setting (memory usage, etc), do edit php.ini:
TODO
Run the shell script ~/start_mailcatcher.sh.
This starts Mailcatcher on Port 1080.
Any emails generated by the server will be caught and displayed inside Mailcatcher.