virtual machine | Eric London's Blog

Setting up NAT and port forwarding to connect to a VirtualBox virtual machine for LAMP development

Submitted by Eric.London on 9/13/2009

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I recently got a new MacBook Pro laptop (awesome!) and went through my usual rigmarole of setting up a new [VirtualBox] virtual machine for LAMP development. In previous situations I used bridged network connections which allow my virtual machine to have its own network connection, and acquire an IP address via DHCP. Now that I plan on being more mobile, I was concerned about having a static IP address for my virtual machine (for samba connections, scripting, and any other processes that relies on a static IP address). I decided to explore alternative virtual network connections and changed my virtual NIC to use NAT (the default network connection for VirtualBox). This configuration establishes a virtual NAT for your virtual machines which is great, but the downside is I know have to setup port forwarding to connect to my virtual machine. In bridged network configurations, I could simply SSH or use Samba to connect to my virtual machine by IP address. With NAT I have to setup port forwarding for the services I need to connect to. Initially I decided to setup port forwarding for SSH (port 22) and HTTP (port 80). While my virtual machine was powered down, I executed the following commands. NOTE: you'll have to replace "Centos" with the name of your virtual machine.

$ VBoxManage setextradata "Centos" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/Protocol" TCP
$ VBoxManage setextradata "Centos" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/GuestPort" 22
$ VBoxManage setextradata "Centos" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/HostPort" 2222
$ VBoxManage setextradata "Centos" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/GuestPort" 80
$ VBoxManage setextradata "Centos" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guesthttp/HostPort" 8080

Now, I can SSH to my virtual machine..

$ ssh -p 2222 Eric@localhost

Or, connect to Apache by browsing to http://localhost:8080

The benefit of this network configuration allows me to travel anywhere with my laptop, use any type of network connection, and not have to worry about changing the way I connect to my virtual machine for development.

Creating and configuring a virtual machine for LAMP development

Submitted by Eric.London on 1/7/2009

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After losing my development virtual machine yesterday, I thought I'd document my process for creating a new one. The first thing to do is download your favorite Linux distribution. I prefer Centos (RHEL without the support contract) but what's most important is creating one that's as close to your production environment as possible (to avoid package version differences, differences in documentation, and deployment issues). The second step is creating a new virtual machine and defining it's properties. For a basic development system, I give it 512MB of RAM and a large enough hard drive for your projects. After defining it's properties, point the CDrom drive at your downloaded Linux distribution ISO and install the operating system. Here's the fun part, getting everything to work...

Update your packages

$ yum update

Install your favorite text editor

$ yum install emacs

Configure sudo so you don't have to use root (in: /etc/sudoers)

%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Create a new user for yourself, and set your new password

$ adduser Eric
$ passwd Eric
# NOTE: add your user to the wheel group in /etc/group so you can setup sudo
# NOTE: add your user to the apache group and vice versa
# NOTE: from now on, log in as your user and use sudo to execute commands that require root privileges

Install subversion

$ sudo yum install subversion

Install mysql

$ sudo yum install mysql-server

Install PHP

$ sudo yum install php php-cli php-common php-devel php-gd php-ldap php-mbstring php-mssql php-mysql php-odbc php-pear php-soap php-xml php-xmlrpc
# NOTE: The previous command will automatically install Apache (httpd) as a dependency

(OPTIONAL) upgrade PEAR packages

$ sudo pear upgrade-all

(OPTIONAL) install additional PEAR packages

$ sudo pear install DB HTML_QuickForm Mail Mail_Mime

(OPTIONAL) install openssl for HTTPS traffic

$ sudo yum install mod_ssl openssl

Set run levels for mysql and apache to ensure the services start automatically

$ sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 httpd on
$ sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 mysqld on

Set MySQL passwords

# root password:
$ /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'YOUR-NEW-PASSWORD'

# your user:
$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> grant all privileges on *.* to 'Eric'@'localhost' identified by 'YOUR-NEW-PASSWORD' with grant option;

# (OPTIONAL) you can add privileges for your user to connect from other computers:
mysql> grant all privileges on *.* to 'Eric'@'%' identified by 'YOUR-NEW-PASSWORD' with grant option;

Configure PHP (edit /etc/php.ini)

$ sudo emacs /etc/php.ini
display_errors = [Off per prod | On per dev/test]
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE
memory_limit = 100M
upload_max_filesize = 100M
post_max_size = 100M

Configure Apache

# create a directory for all your vhosts, and set permissions
sudo mkdir /var/www/vhosts
sudo chown -R Eric.Eric /var/www/vhosts
sudo chmod -R 2770 /var/www/vhosts

# create a new configuration file to keep your changes separate from httpd.conf
$ sudo emacs /etc/httpd/conf.d/Eric.conf

# FILE CONTENTS - START

# set directory indexes to ensure php files are not read as text
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.html.var index.htm

# enable name based virtual hosts, so you can host multiple hostnames on one server
NameVirtualHost *:80

# I create a separate directory for all my virtual hosts. This allows .htaccess files to work properly
<Directory /var/www/vhosts>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

# add your first virtual host entry
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName SITEHOSTNAME
DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/SITEHOSTNAME/httpdocs
ErrorLog logs/SITEHOSTNAME-error_log
CustomLog logs/SITEHOSTNAME-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

# FILE CONTENTS - END

Configure MySQL (edit /etc/my.cnf)

[mysqld]
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=32M

Start Apache & MySQL

$ /etc/init.d/mysqld start
$ /etc/init.d/httpd start

(OPTIONAL) Configure Samba so you can edit your virtual machine filesystem from your host operating system
[documentation here]

Now, from your host operating system, edit your /etc/hosts file and point your development hostname to the new IP address of your virtual machine. If you go to that web address you should be able to reach your Apache virtual host on your new virtual machine!

Configure your virtual machine to deliver email locally (using postfix, cyrus, imap, and sasl)

Submitted by Eric.London on 9/17/2008

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I do almost all of my development on Centos virtual machines. This allows me to keep my filesystem, databases, and server configurations contained in a separate environment without harming my host operating system (OSX). This morning, I encountered a problem with my email not being delivered properly. I'm assuming this happened because my virtual machine is not a full qualified email server. I figured the easiest solution would be to setup my virtual machine as an IMAP server instead of trying to fight with DNS, static IPs, spam filters, etc. When it comes down to it, all I need is for my emails sent from my web applications to end up in my email client inbox. Here's what I did to get this to work...

1. Ditch sendmail and install postfix. Postfix is much easier to configure; Sendmail is jibberish.

yum remove sendmail
yum install postfix
chkconfig --level 2345 postfix on

2. Install cyrus, my preferred IMAP service. NOTE: SASL will be the authentication method service

yum install cyrus-imapd cyrus-sasl
chkconfig --level 2345 cyrus-imapd on
chkconfig --level 2345 saslauthd on

3. Configure Postfix service

# edit /etc/postfix/main.cf and change this line:
mailbox_transport = cyrus

# most importantly, I added a few domains (work, personal, etc) to the mydestination variable to ensure that mail sent from my server will be delivered locally, instead of leaving my virtual machine. Make sure you add all the corresponding aliases in /etc/aliases. For instance: If you want to receive email sent to wee@blah.com, you'll have to add blah.com to the list of domains in mydestination and add an alias for wee to redirect to your email account name.

4. Configure Cyrus

# set sasl passwords
saslpasswd2 cyrus
saslpasswd2 eric

# Use Cyrus admin tool to configure mailbox
cyradm --user cyrus --server localhost
> createmailbox user.eric
> setaclmailbox user.eric eric all
> quit

5. Add a new IMAP account in your favorite email client. For my setup, I used the IP address of my virtual machine as the incoming mail server address. Now, when mail is delivered from my virtual machines, it is delivered locally and my email client is used to fetch the new messages!

6. To ensure your setup is working properly, you can send a quick email from the command line (on your virtual machine)

date | mail eric@somedomain.com