universal-vagrant

universal-vagrant is an out-of-the-box working Vagrant provisioner.

universal-vagrant uses the precise32 box (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS) and sets up Apache 2, MySQL and PHP5 by default. However, this project can be extended to use any box and provision any software/platform as required.

Step 1

Install the latest versions of Vagrant and VirtualBox on your machine. They are available for fairly recent versions of OSX and Windows.

Step 2

Download the latest release of universal-vagrant into a folder outside of your web root. E.g. into /www/universal-vagrant or C:/www/universal-vagrant.

Step 3

Copy /www/universal-vagrant/Vagrantfile-sample into your project folder and rename it to Vagrantfile. E.g. /www/my-project/Vagrantfile.

Step 4

Edit the copied Vagrantfile (in your text editor). Instructions of what to change are indicated inside the file with comments. E.g. path to universal-vagrant, and folder permissions.

Step 5

Open your Terminal or command line window:

> cd /www/my-project
> vagrant up

This runs the Vagrant provisioner, and will take a few minutes, depending on the speed of your machine.

You should then end up with a working LAMP envionrment.

Go to http://localhost:8080 on your web browser to access your project via the web server.

Done!

Tip: Add a PHP file with the line <?php phpinfo(); in your project web root to test PHP functionality.

Database

The provisioner will attempt to set up any database(s) for your project. Create database SQL dumps in /www/my-project/_database with the name of the database as the filename.

E.g. /www/my-project/_database/project.sql will create a database with the name project. You can have more than one database, if required.

To access the database within your app, use the following credentials:

define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
define('DB_USERNAME', 'root');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
define('DB_NAME', 'project'); // Should be the same as your SQL file name

To access the database within your desktop MySQL app, tunnel via SSH with:

Host: 127.0.0.1
SSH user: vagrant
SSH key: [Vagrant typically puts this in ~/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key]
Port: 2222

SSH

You can SSH into the Vagrant box using Terminal or the command line window.

> vagrant ssh

Some common Vagrant commands

If you need to reprovision your box (e.g. to use a new version of the database file):

> vagrant provision

If you have several projects up and running, it is advised to suspend your Vagrant box before you enable the other. To suspend:

> vagrant suspend

And to wake it up again:

> vagrant up

If you don't want your Vagrant box anymore, you can destroy it:

> vagrant destroy