How to create a VM with PHP 5.4 using Vagrant and Puppet

Everybody PHP developer who didn’t live under a rock the past few months must have heard of the upcoming release of PHP 5.4. Well, March 1 it was finally there: the official release of PHP 5.4!

Because it definately will take some time before we can install it with our favorite package manager, I decided to create a small Puppet manifest in combination with Vagrant that will build a virtual machine. Normally, you have to compile PHP from source in order to try it that quickly after it has been released. However, the nice dudes from dotdeb.org compiled them already for us, and provide it via their repository. Nice! 🙂
Furthermore, Vagrant provides us a cool Ubuntu server image, ready to rock with Puppet. So, let’s get thing of the ground shall we? (pro tip: scroll all the way down to simply clone my git repository with all the code ;))

Prerequisites

In order to get things running smoothly you have:

Installed VirtualBox 4.1.x
Installed Vagrant
Some IDE for editing Puppet manifests (I prefer Geppetto)

Creating our project structure

Let’s start with creating a basic directory structure for storing our files needed. Fire up Eclipse/Geppetto and start a new project in your workspace. Create the following structure:

manifests
modules
- php54
  - files
  - manifests
www

Writing the Puppet manifest

There are a few things we need to accomplish with Puppet, in chronological order:

Add the dotdeb.org repository to/etc/apt/sources.list
Add the dotdeb.org GPG key
Run apt-get update
Run apt-get install php5

Because we can bucket files to the VM easily with Puppet, I choose to supply a modified sources.list so Puppet takes care of copying it into the VM. Then, I download the GPG key with the famous wget utility and pipe it into apt-key. The exec call to apt-get update speaks for itself, and last but not least I tell Puppet to install the latest php5 package.

With the require directive I make sure that all commands are executed in the right order.

The contents of the init.pp file in the php54 module looks like this:

class php54 {
	file { "/etc/apt/sources.list":
		ensure =&gt; file,
		owner =&gt; root,
		group =&gt; root,
		source =&gt; "puppet:///modules/php54/sources.list",
	}
	exec { "import-gpg":
		command =&gt; "/usr/bin/wget -q http://www.dotdeb.org/dotdeb.gpg -O -| /usr/bin/apt-key add -"
	}

	exec { "/usr/bin/apt-get update":
		require =&gt; [File["/etc/apt/sources.list"], Exec["import-gpg"]],
	}

	package { [
		"php5"
	] :
		ensure =&gt; latest,
		require =&gt; Exec["/usr/bin/apt-get update"]
	}
}

class php54 {

file { "/etc/apt/sources.list":

ensure => file,

owner => root,

group => root,

source => "puppet:///modules/php54/sources.list",

}

exec { "import-gpg":

command => "/usr/bin/wget -q http://www.dotdeb.org/dotdeb.gpg -O -| /usr/bin/apt-key add -"

}

exec { "/usr/bin/apt-get update":

require => [File["/etc/apt/sources.list"], Exec["import-gpg"]],

}

package { [

"php5"

] :

ensure => latest,

require => Exec["/usr/bin/apt-get update"]

}

Also we create a sources.list file in the “files” directory (you could change the Debian mirrors):

deb http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ squeeze main
deb-src http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ squeeze main

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main

deb http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ squeeze-updates main
deb-src http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ squeeze-updates main

deb http://packages.dotdeb.org/ squeeze-php54 all

deb http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ squeeze main

deb-src http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ squeeze main

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main

deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main

deb http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ squeeze-updates main

deb-src http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/debian/ squeeze-updates main

deb http://packages.dotdeb.org/ squeeze-php54 all

Last thing I do is create the entry point for Puppet, namely the site.pp file in the manifests directory:

include php54

1	include php54

All I do is including the php54 module which will handle all the magic for us.

Creating the virtual machine

Now Vagrant comes in to use. Create a Vagrantfile in your project root with the following content:

Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
  config.vm.box = "squeeze32"
  config.vm.host_name = "php54"
  # taken from vagrantbox.es
  config.vm.box_url = "http://mathie-vagrant-boxes.s3.amazonaws.com/debian_squeeze_32.box"
  config.vm.boot_mode = :gui
  config.vm.network :hostonly, "33.33.33.10"
  config.vm.share_folder "www", "/var/www", "./www"

  config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet|
    puppet.manifests_path = "manifests"
    puppet.module_path = "modules"
    puppet.manifest_file = "site.pp"
  end
end

Vagrant::Config.run do |config|

config.vm.box = "squeeze32"

config.vm.host_name = "php54"

# taken from vagrantbox.es

config.vm.box_url = "http://mathie-vagrant-boxes.s3.amazonaws.com/debian_squeeze_32.box"

config.vm.boot_mode = :gui

config.vm.network :hostonly, "33.33.33.10"

config.vm.share_folder "www", "/var/www", "./www"

config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet|

puppet.manifests_path = "manifests"

puppet.module_path = "modules"

puppet.manifest_file = "site.pp"

end

I’m using a Debian Squeeze box from vagrantbox.es here, credits go to the original author. I’m making use of the VirtualBox shared folders. These are not really fast, but will do for testing purposes. If you want some more advanced sharing I suggest NFS or Samba if you are on Windows.

Now, all left to do is start the VM. Open up a terminal and do vagrant up in your project root:

$ vagrant up

1	$ vagrant up

Navigate to http://33.33.33.10 with your favorite browser and have some happy testing 🙂

For all the lazy people out there, you can start the box with just 3 commands:

$ git clone git://github.com/ricbra/php54-sandbox.git
$ cd php54-sandbox
$ vagrant up

$ git clone git://github.com/ricbra/php54-sandbox.git

$ cd php54-sandbox

$ vagrant up

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