OpenShift – git push your webpage to the cloud

OpenShift provides you with up to three free gadgets. Sufficient cloud space to maintain your PoCs at no cost. The blog shall guide you through the first steps to get your PHP server and pages up and running.

Setup toolchain (git, ruby gems, rhc)

bla@blu:~$ sudo apt-get install git-core
...
bla@blu:~$ sudo gem install rhc
...
bla@blu:~$ rhc setup
OpenShift Client Tools (RHC) Setup Wizard

This wizard will help you upload your SSH keys, set your application namespace,
and check that other programs like Git are properly installed.

If you have your own OpenShift server, you can specify it now. Just hit enter to
use the server for OpenShift Online: openshift.redhat.com.
Enter the server hostname: |openshift.redhat.com|

You can add more servers later using 'rhc server'.

Login to openshift.redhat.com: bla@blu.bl
Password: ******************************

OpenShift can create and store a token on disk which allows to you to access the
server without using your password. The key is stored in your home directory and
should be kept secret.  You can delete the key at any time by running 'rhc
logout'.
Generate a token now? (yes|no) yes
Generating an authorization token for this client ... done
Saving configuration to /home/user/.openshift/express.conf ... done

Your public SSH key must be uploaded to the OpenShift server to access code.
Upload now? (yes|no)
yes

Since you do not have any keys associated with your OpenShift account, your new
key will be uploaded as the 'default' key.

Uploading key 'default' ... done

Checking for git ... found git version 1.9.1

Checking common problems .. done

Checking for a domain ... none

Applications are grouped into domains - each domain has a unique name (called a
namespace) that becomes part of your public application URL. You may create your
first domain here or leave it blank and use 'rhc create-domain' later. You will
not be able to create an application without completing this step.

Please enter a namespace (letters and numbers only) |<none>|: xmpldomain
Your domain 'xmpldomain' has been successfully created

Checking for applications ... none

Run 'rhc create-app' to create your first application.

Do-It-Yourself 0.1                         rhc create-app <app name> diy-0.1
JBoss Application Server 7                 rhc create-app <app name> jbossas-7
JBoss Data Virtualization 6                rhc create-app <app name> jboss-dv-6.1.0
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6    rhc create-app <app name> jbosseap-6
JBoss Unified Push Server 1.0.0.Beta1      rhc create-app <app name> jboss-unified-push-1
JBoss Unified Push Server 1.0.0.Beta2      rhc create-app <app name> jboss-unified-push-2
Jenkins Server                             rhc create-app <app name> jenkins-1
Node.js 0.10                               rhc create-app <app name> nodejs-0.10
PHP 5.3                                    rhc create-app <app name> php-5.3
PHP 5.4                                    rhc create-app <app name> php-5.4
PHP 5.4 with Zend Server 6.1               rhc create-app <app name> zend-6.1
Perl 5.10                                  rhc create-app <app name> perl-5.10
Python 2.6                                 rhc create-app <app name> python-2.6
Python 2.7                                 rhc create-app <app name> python-2.7
Python 3.3                                 rhc create-app <app name> python-3.3
Ruby 1.8                                   rhc create-app <app name> ruby-1.8
Ruby 1.9                                   rhc create-app <app name> ruby-1.9
Ruby 2.0                                   rhc create-app <app name> ruby-2.0
Tomcat 6 (JBoss EWS 1.0)                   rhc create-app <app name> jbossews-1.0
Tomcat 7 (JBoss EWS 2.0)                   rhc create-app <app name> jbossews-2.0
Vert.x 2.1                                 rhc create-app <app name> jboss-vertx-2.1
WildFly Application Server 10              rhc create-app <app name> jboss-wildfly-10
WildFly Application Server 8.2.1.Final     rhc create-app <app name> jboss-wildfly-8
WildFly Application Server 9               rhc create-app <app name> jboss-wildfly-9

You are using 0 of 3 total gears
The following gear sizes are available to you: small

Your client tools are now configured.

By now, you have a working environment and setup all necessary credentials and your own cloud space.

Create your first PHP application (gear, cartridge)

bla@blu:~$ rhc create-app xmplapp php-5.4
...
Domain:     xmpldomain
Cartridges: php-5.4
Gear Size:  default
Scaling:    no

Creating application 'xmplapp' ... done

Waiting for your DNS name to be available ... done

Cloning into 'xmplapp'... done

Your application 'xmplapp' is now available.

URL:        http://xmplapp-xmpldomain.rhcloud.com/
SSH to:     ab53162a82f1c99023d12af3@xmplapp-xmpldomain.rhcloud.com
Git remote: ssh://ab53162a82f1c99023d12af3@xmplapp-xmpldomain.rhcloud.com/~/git/xmplapp.git/
Cloned to:  /home/user/xmplapp

Run 'rhc show-app xmplapp' for more details about your app.
...

You just successfully deployed your web server under your custom domain. You are ready to push your files to your webserver.

Publish your files using git (git push)

OpenShift relies on git repositories to synchronize files between the cloud server and your machine. Files in your repo will be pushed to the web servers document root.

bla@blu:~/Dev/rhc-git/xmplapp$ cp ~/Documents/mirror/www.example.org/* . -r

bla@blu:~/Dev/rhc-git/xmplapp$ ls
myfolder  robots.txt

bla@blu:~/Dev/rhc-git/xmplapp$ git add -A

bla@blu:~/Dev/rhc-git/xmplapp$ git commit -a -m 'initial content load'
[master ef9624f] initial content load
1037 files changed, 159387 insertions(+)
...
create mode 100644 robots.txt

bla@blu:~/Dev/rhc-git/xmplapp$ git push
Counting objects: 1058, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (1046/1046), done.
Writing objects: 100% (1057/1057), 9.25 MiB | 1.22 MiB/s, done.
Total 1057 (delta 531), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Stopping PHP 5.4 cartridge (Apache+modphp)
remote: Waiting for stop to finish
remote: Waiting for stop to finish
remote: Building git ref 'master', commit a23b241
remote: Checking .openshift/pear.txt for PEAR dependency...
remote: Preparing build for deployment
remote: Deployment id is ab46361a
remote: Activating deployment
remote: Starting PHP 5.4 cartridge (Apache+modphp)
remote: Application directory "/" selected as DocumentRoot
remote: -------------------------
remote: Git Post-Receive Result: success
remote: Activation status: success
remote: Deployment completed with status: success
To ssh://ab53162a82f1c99023d12af3@xmplapp-xmpldomain.rhcloud.com/~/git/xmplapp.git/
1aa6203..a23b241  master -> master

Finally, it’s all there. Go, have a look at http://xmplapp-xmpldomain.rhcloud.com/

Custom Domain Name (add an alias and CNAME record)

Add an alias to your PHP application (gear) if your prefer to run it under your custom domain. Run the following command assumed your domain name is http://www.example.com. Note, you need to add a CNAME record to your DNS configuration to let http://www.example.com point to xmplapp-xmpldomain.rhcloud.com.

bla@blu:~/Dev/rhc-git/xmplapp$ rhc alias add xmplapp www.example.org
Alias 'www.example.org' has been added.

Your web page will be reachable by http://www.example.com. Note, that TLS (formerly SSL) for custom domains is not available within the free plan.

Create your first backup (save snapshots)

Well, it’s nice to have stuff online but a local backup might come in handy some time. So, let’s keep a snapshot of the site.

bla@blu:~/Dev/rhc-git$ rhc snapshot save xmplapp
Pulling down a snapshot of application 'xmplapp' to xmplapp.tar.gz ... done

rhc will store the snapshot as gzipped tarball (.tar.gz) in the working directory. It’s named after the application xmplapp.tar.gz.

bla@blu:~/Dev/rhc-git$ ls
xmplapp  xmplapp.tar.gz

Create a new VM from a non-Proxmox appliance template

I love Proxmox Virtual Environment when it comes to manage my own “Cloud”. However, the version I run (v1.9) has some issues with  non-compliant appliance templates. So if I just copy or wget templates to the cache folder then the Proxmox web GUI marks these as “– unknown –” and they seem not to be usable to create new virtual machines.

Don’t bother… switch to good old bash and execute the following command with the template of your choice. Note, you should also substitute the rootpasswd string with some meaningful salt/hash combination.

/usr/bin/pvectl vzcreate 600 --disk 20 --ostemplate local:vztmpl/ubuntu-12.04-x86.tar.gz --rootpasswd $1$gs0UfL2E$ZQaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA84/G1 --hostname ve600.example.com --nameserver 123.123.123.123 --nameserver 124.124.124.124 --searchdomain example.com --onboot yes --ipset 10.11.12.13 --swap 256 --mem 256 --cpus 1

Switch back to your web console and enjoy your newly created playground.

IBM ThinkPad Unauthorized Network Card

I did replace my old-fashioned IBM ThinkPad R50 wireless miniPCI network card with a new 802.11n device. Unfortunately, the BIOS did not really like it… Error 1802 Unathorized network card… As you might guess, there are work arounds. Some have posted how to add the new card to the list of accepted ones (patch some BIOS bytes) and some have posted how to flip the correct BIOS byte to disable the check.

I feared the effort to create a new BIOS and flash it to the ROM. Moreover, a BIOS updated would just obsolete my changes. However, there is a pretty cool bootable DOS CDROM that includes a patch

1) download and burn ISO here
2) disable your laptops wireless device (so the BIOS does not complain with Err 1802)
3) boot from disc
4) type no-1802 at the command prompt (there will be no message, don’t worry)
5) reboot, enable wireless device

Worked out of the box.

How to chkconfig (OpenKM JBOSS init script)

It needs some steps to integrate OpenKM properly. Therefore, you basically need to engineer your start script yourself. The following notes should help to get JBOSS up quickly.

1) create a new user 

  # useradd jboss
2) copy script

  # cp JBOSS_HOME/bin/jboss_init_redhat.sh /etc/init.d/jboss
3) add chkconfig properties to init file

  # chkconfig: 345 65 35
  # description: JBOSS AS init script
  # pidfile: /var/run/jboss.pid
4) adjust all other variables in the init file header 
5) add script to chkconfig
  # chkconfig --add jboss
6) set jboss to be started at level 3
  # chkconfig jboss --level 3 on
7) start now (# service jboss start)

Configuring alternatives in CentOS (e.g. Oracle Java SE)

The installation of Oracle Java SE (JDK) on some Linux distribution is still a fight. Probably the most staright forward way on Cent OS is downloading and installing the most current  self-exctracting archive (.bin) and installing it to /opt.

Finally, ensure the Oracle Java SE binary ist called instead of the GNU ones.

#alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/jdk1.6.025/bin/java
#alternatives --config java

There are 2 programs which provide 'java'.

Selection Command
------------------------------------------------
*+ 1 /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java
2 /opt/jdk1.6.025/bin/java

 

Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 2

Forward mails to specific servers (Postfix transport)

I was struggling to efficiently forward the OpenVZ hosts local e-mails to an private VE (MTA) since that system is bound to an IP address from a private range (192.168.x.x). Basically, I just wanted to have all mail for example.com to be routed to that “internal” mail server. In the end, postfix manuals led me to a simple solution. Thus, add the following lines to the postfix configuration files.

/etc/postfix/main.cf

transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport

/etc/postfix/transport

example.com  smtp:192.168.1.1

To make sure your changes are being applied, run the following commands

# postmap /etc/postfix/transport
# postfix reload

The above lines cause postfix to forward mail targeting example.com to the MTA with IP 192.168.1.1. Make sure, the recipient mail server does accept incoming connections (I had to adjust the postgrey whitelist)

A resume issue is chasing me since I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04

The machine is not properly resuming since I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04. Folks seem to have the same issue but it always takes me an hour to get the right fix from the Ubuntu forums. Therfore, my personal entry.

It looks like the new kernels have an issue with old Radeon or ATI graphics cards such as those built into the IBM Thinkpad R50 or R51. However, adding a simple “nomodeset” to /boot/grub/menu.lst does the trick.

title Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, kernel 2.6.32-25-generic root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-25-generic ... nomodeset
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-25-generic quiet

Backup VE in OpenVZ on CentOS

Unfortunately, the CentOS 5.5 final release and repositories do not support vzdump out of the box. However, some research and hints in other blogs finally led me to a running solutions.

wget http://download.openvz.org/contrib/utils/vzdump/vzdump-1.2-4.noarch.rpm
wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/cstream/cstream-2.7.4-3.el4.rf.x8664.rpm
wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/perl-LockFile-Simple/perl-LockFile-Simple-0.206-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm

rpm -i cstream-2.7.4-3.el4.rf.x8664.rpm
rpm -i perl-LockFile-Simple-0.206-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
rpm -i vzdump-1.2-4.noarch.rpm

 

export PERL5LIB=/usr/share/perl5/

That’s it.

vzdump --suspend --compress --all --mailto cybr@haite.ch

INFO: Starting Backup of VM 103 (openvz)
INFO: CTID 103 exist mounted running
INFO: status = CTID 103 exist mounted running
INFO: backup mode: suspend
INFO: bandwidth limit: 10240 KB/s
INFO: starting first sync /vz/private/103/ to /vz/dump/vzdump-openvz-103-20100906-211257.tmp
...