Vagrant: PHP & Virtual Development Environment

Posted on by flakesns

I’ve two server running my PHP application with both server have different LAMP version.
Server A use Centos 7, PHP 5.5 and Maria-DB
Server B use Centos 6.5, PHP 5.3 and Mysql 5.3.3

My development machine using Ubuntu 14, PHP 5.4 and mysql 5.5.

Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to publish my app to both server as they are using different version.

So i decided to use Vagrant on my local machine – to perform the Server A & B running on my local machine, at least i can test my app before publish to both live server.

Here are the steps i do on my local Ubuntu 14:

  1. Install Virtual Box
  2. Install Vagrant

Then create new folder in my Home:

mkdir vagrant6.5
cd vagrant6.5;

Then add the box:
vagrant box add nrel/CentOS-6.5-x86_64;

Then start initialize the folder:
vagrant init nrel/CentOS-6.5-x86_64;

You can try to use Provisioning to configure the box environment.

Configure your Vagrantfile as below: (make changes with your environment)

config.vm.box = "fillup/centos-6.5-x86_64-minimal"
config.vm.provision :shell, path: "bootstrap.sh"
config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 4568
config.vm.synced_folder "/var/www", "/var/www"

You will have a shared www folder between local and environment.

Then create file bootstrap.sh, and below just simple example of the content:

yum --quiet -y install httpd-2.2.15
yum --quiet -y install git
yum --quiet -y install php-5.3.3-40.el6_6
yum --quiet -y install mysql-server-5.1.73-5.el6_6 mysql-5.1.73-5.el6_6

Save and in the terminal run:
vagrant up –provision

The box will loaded the centos os and the provision setup (run provision one time only, next time just use vagrant up).

*** If you are not using the provision. then you can manual install the apache,php, mysql, redis etc in the centos environment.

Use command below to enter the centos environment:
vagrant ssh;

To exit the ssh, just type exit command.

To stop the vagrant, use below command — it will save all data/configuration and stop the vagrant.
vagrant halt;

For more details about the vagrant, please click here.