It’s possible to add a custom buildpack to Stackato or Helion Development Platform so that it’s available to all applications. When using an installed buildpack it is not necessary to include a manifest or identify the buildpack. Instead it will be selected by the detect script in the buildpack. All files are on the cloud controller node which eliminates download time and bandwidth. Package the buildpack Prepare your buildpack for installation by adding all files to a zip file (of any name). The bin folder should be in the root of the zip......
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Previously I detailed the process to create a buildpack for Stackato or Helion, including reconfiguring the buildpack to be self-contained. In both previous examples, the compile script performed a configure and make on source to build the binaries for the application. Since the configure->make process is often slow, this can be done once and the binaries added to the git repository for the buildpack. Pre-compile nginx The first step is to build nginx to run in the docker container for Stackato or Helion. These steps were previously in the compile script, but now......
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I previously documented the process to create a buildpack for nginx to use with Stackato or Helion Dev Platform. In that buildpack example, the compile script would download the nginx source using wget. In some cases, the time, bandwidth or access required to download external resources may be undesirable. In those cases the buildpack can be adjusted to work offline by adding the external resources to the git repository. The new structure would look like this. Updated compile script The only bulidpack related file that would need to change to accommodate this is......
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CloudFoundry accommodates buildpacks which define a deployment environment. A buildpack is distinct from an application and provides everything the application needs to run, including web server, language runtime, libraries, etc. The most basic structure for a buildpack requires three files inside a directory named bin. The buildpack files discussed in this post can be cloned or forked at https://github.com/dwatrous/buildpack-nginx Some quick points about these buildpack files All three files must be executable via bash Can be shell scripts or any language that can be invoked using bash Explicit use of paths recommended detect......
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I’m about to write a few articles about creating buildpacks for Stackato, which is a derivative of CloudFoundry and the technology behind Helion Development Platform. The approach for deploying nginx in docker as part of a buildpack differs from the approach I published previously. There are a few reasons for this: Stackato discourages root access to the docker image All services will run as the stackato user The PORT to which services must bind is assigned and in the free range (no root required) Get a host setup to run docker The easiest......
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I’ve been reviewing Docker recently. As part of that review, I decided to build a LEMP stack in Docker. I use Vagrant to create an environment in which to run Docker. For this experiment I chose to create Buildfiles to create the Docker container images. I’ll be discussing the following files in this post. Vagrantfile bootstrap.sh mysql/Dockerfile mysql/mysqlpwdseed nginx/Dockerfile nginx/default nginx/wall.phpVagrantfile bootstrap.sh mysql/Dockerfile mysql/mysqlpwdseed nginx/Dockerfile nginx/default nginx/wall.php Download the Docker LEMP files as a zip (docker-lemp.zip). Spin up the Host System I start with Vagrant to spin up a host system for my......
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My objective in this post is to explore the use of Ansible to configure a multi-server LEMP stack. This builds on the preliminary work I did demonstrating how to use Vagrant to create an environment to run Ansible. You can follow this entire example on any Windows (or Linux) host. Ansible only runs on Linux hosts, not Windows. As a result, I needed to provision one Linux host to act as Ansible controller. One aspect of Ansible that I wanted to explore is the ability to manage multiple hosts with different configurations. For......
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I may have just fallen in love with the tool Vagrant. Vagrant makes it possible to quickly create a virtual environment for development. It is different than cloning or snapshots in that it uses minimal base OSes and provides a provisioning mechanism to setup and configure the environment exactly the way you want for development. I love this for a few reasons: All developers work in the exact same environment Developers can get a new environment up in minutes Developers don’t need to be experts at setting up the environment. System details can......
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