Tag Archives: Docker

LDAPGUI a LDAP GUI program in Python and Tkinter

I wanted to automate certain operations that we do very often, and so I decided to do a PoC of how handy will it be to create GUI applications that can automate tasks.

As locating information in several repositories of information (ldap, databases, websites, etc…) can be tedious I decided to create a small program that queries LDAP for the information I’m interested, in this case a Location. This small program can very easily escalated to launch the VPN, to query a Database after querying LDAP if no results are found, etc…

I share with you the basic application as you may find interesting to create GUI applications in Python, compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac.

I’m super Linux fan but this is important, as many multinationals still use Windows or Mac even for Engineers and SRE positions.

With the article I provide a Dockerfile and a docker-compose.yml file that will launch an OpenLDAP Docker Container preloaded with very basic information and a PHPLDAPMIN Container.

Installation of the dependencies

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install python3.8 python3-tk
pip install ldap3

Windows and Mac:

Install Python3.6 or greater and from command line.

For Mac install pip if you don’t have it.

pip install ldap3

Python Code

#!/bin/env python3

import tkinter as tk
from ldap3 import Server, Connection, MODIFY_ADD, MODIFY_REPLACE, ALL_ATTRIBUTES, ObjectDef, Reader
from ldap3.utils.dn import safe_rdn
from lib.fileutils import FileUtils

# sudo apt-get install python3.8 python3-tk
# pip install ldap3


class LDAPGUI:

    s_config_file = "config.cfg"

    s_ldap_server = "ldapslave01"
    s_connection = "uid=%USERNAME%, cn=users, cn=accounts, dc=demo1, dc=carlesmateo, dc=com"
    s_username = "carlesmateo"
    s_password = "Secret123"
    s_query = "location=%LOCATION%,dc=demo1,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com"

    i_window_width = 610
    i_window_height = 650
    i_frame_width = i_window_width-5
    i_frame_height = 30
    i_frame_results_height = 400

    # Graphical objects
    o_window = None
    o_entry_ldap = None
    o_entry_connection = None
    o_entry_results = None
    o_entry_username = None
    o_entry_location = None
    o_button_search = None

    def __init__(self, o_fileutils):
        self.o_fileutils = o_fileutils

    def replace_connection_with_username(self):
        s_connection_raw = self.o_entry_username.get()
        s_connection = self.s_connection.replace("%USERNAME%", s_connection_raw)
        return s_connection

    def replace_query_with_location(self):
        s_query_raw = self.o_entry_location.get()
        s_query = self.s_query.replace("%LOCATION%", s_query_raw)
        return s_query

    def clear_results(self):
        self.o_entry_results.delete("1.0", tk.END)

    def enable_button(self):
        self.o_button_search["state"] = tk.NORMAL

    def disable_button(self):
        self.o_button_search["state"] = tk.DISABLED

    def ldap_run_query(self):

        self.disable_button()
        self.clear_results()

        s_ldap_server = self.o_entry_ldap.get()
        self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Connecting to: " + s_ldap_server + "...\n")
        try:

            o_server = Server(s_ldap_server)
            o_conn = Connection(o_server,
                                self.replace_connection_with_username(),
                                self.s_password,
                                auto_bind=False)
            o_conn.bind()

            if isinstance(o_conn.last_error, str):
                s_last_error = o_conn.last_error
                self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Last error: " + s_last_error + "\n")

            if isinstance(o_conn.result, str):
                s_conn_result = o_conn.result
                self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Connection result: " + s_conn_result + "\n")

            s_query = self.replace_query_with_location()
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Performing Query: " + s_query + "\n")

            obj_location = ObjectDef('organizationalUnit', o_conn)
            r = Reader(o_conn, obj_location, s_query)
            r.search()
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Results: \n" + str(r) + "\n")
            #print(r)

            #print(0, o_conn.extend.standard.who_am_i())
            # https://github.com/cannatag/ldap3/blob/master/tut1.py
            # https://github.com/cannatag/ldap3/blob/master/tut2.py

        except:
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "There has been a problem" + "\n")

            if isinstance(o_conn.last_error, str):
                s_last_error = o_conn.last_error
                self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Last error: " + s_last_error + "\n")

        try:
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Closing connection\n")
            o_conn.unbind()
        except:
            self.o_entry_results.insert(tk.END, "Problem closing connection" + "\n")

        self.enable_button()

    def create_frame_location(self, o_window, i_width, i_height):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_location = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                  text="Location:",
                                  width=10,
                                  height=1)
        o_lbl_location.place(x=0, y=0)

        o_entry = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry.insert(tk.END, "")
        o_entry.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry

    def create_frame_results(self, o_window, i_width, i_height):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_entry = tk.Text(master=o_frame, fg="grey", bg="white", width=75, height=20)
        o_entry.insert(tk.END, "")
        o_entry.place(x=0, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry

    def create_frame_username(self, o_window, i_width, i_height, s_username):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_location = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                  text="Username:",
                                  width=10,
                                  height=1)
        o_lbl_location.place(x=0, y=0)

        o_entry_username = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry_username.insert(tk.END, s_username)
        o_entry_username.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry_username

    def create_frame_ldapserver(self, o_window, i_width, i_height, s_server):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_ldapserver = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                    text="LDAP Server:",
                                    width=10,
                                    height=1)
        o_lbl_ldapserver.place(x=0, y=0)
        # We don't need to pack the label, as it is inside a Frame, packet
        # o_lbl_ldapserver.pack()

        o_entry = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry.insert(tk.END, s_server)
        o_entry.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry

    def create_frame_connection(self, o_window, i_width, i_height, s_connection):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_connection = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                    text="Connection:",
                                    width=10,
                                    height=1)
        o_lbl_connection.place(x=0, y=0)
        # We don't need to pack the label, as it is inside a Frame, packet
        # o_lbl_ldapserver.pack()

        o_entry_connection = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry_connection.insert(tk.END, s_connection)
        o_entry_connection.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry_connection

    def create_frame_query(self, o_window, i_width, i_height, s_query):
        o_frame = tk.Frame(master=o_window, width=i_width, height=i_height)
        o_frame.pack()

        o_lbl_query = tk.Label(master=o_frame,
                                    text="Connection:",
                                    width=10,
                                    height=1)
        o_lbl_query.place(x=0, y=0)

        o_entry_query = tk.Entry(master=o_frame, fg="yellow", bg="blue", width=50)
        o_entry_query.insert(tk.END, s_query)
        o_entry_query.place(x=100, y=0)

        return o_frame, o_entry_query

    def create_button(self):
        o_button = tk.Button(
            text="Search",
            width=25,
            height=1,
            bg="blue",
            fg="yellow",
            command=self.ldap_run_query
        )

        o_button.pack()

        return o_button

    def render_screen(self):
        o_window = tk.Tk()
        o_window.title("LDAPGUI by Carles Mateo")
        self.o_window = o_window
        self.o_window.geometry(str(self.i_window_width) + 'x' + str(self.i_window_height))

        o_frame_ldap, o_entry_ldap = self.create_frame_ldapserver(o_window=o_window,
                                                                  i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                  i_height=self.i_frame_height,
                                                                  s_server=self.s_ldap_server)
        self.o_entry_ldap = o_entry_ldap
        o_frame_connection, o_entry_connection = self.create_frame_connection(o_window=o_window,
                                                                              i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                              i_height=self.i_frame_height,
                                                                              s_connection=self.s_connection)
        self.o_entry_connection = o_entry_connection

        o_frame_user, o_entry_user = self.create_frame_username(o_window=o_window,
                                                                i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                i_height=self.i_frame_height,
                                                                s_username=self.s_username)
        self.o_entry_username = o_entry_user

        o_frame_query, o_entry_query = self.create_frame_query(o_window=o_window,
                                                               i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                               i_height=self.i_frame_height,
                                                               s_query=self.s_query)
        self.o_entry_query = o_entry_query


        o_frame_location, o_entry_location = self.create_frame_location(o_window=o_window,
                                                                        i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                        i_height=self.i_frame_height)

        self.o_entry_location = o_entry_location

        o_button_search = self.create_button()
        self.o_button_search = o_button_search

        o_frame_results, o_entry_results = self.create_frame_results(o_window=o_window,
                                                                     i_width=self.i_frame_width,
                                                                     i_height=self.i_frame_results_height)
        self.o_entry_results = o_entry_results

        o_window.mainloop()

    def load_config_values(self):
        b_success, d_s_config = self.o_fileutils.read_config_file_values(self.s_config_file)
        if b_success is True:
            if 'server' in d_s_config:
                self.s_ldap_server = d_s_config['server']
            if 'connection' in d_s_config:
                self.s_connection = d_s_config['connection']
            if 'username' in d_s_config:
                self.s_username = d_s_config['username']
            if 'password' in d_s_config:
                self.s_password = d_s_config['password']
            if 'query' in d_s_config:
                self.s_query = d_s_config['query']


def main():
    o_fileutils = FileUtils()

    o_ldapgui = LDAPGUI(o_fileutils=o_fileutils)
    o_ldapgui.load_config_values()

    o_ldapgui.render_screen()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Dockerfile

FROM osixia/openldap

# Note: Docker compose will generate the Docker Image.
# Run:  sudo docker-compose up -d

LABEL maintainer="Carles Mateo"

ENV LDAP_ORGANISATION="Carles Mateo Test Org" \
    LDAP_DOMAIN="carlesmateo.com"

COPY bootstrap.ldif /container/service/slapd/assets/config/bootstrap/ldif/50-bootstrap.ldif

docker-compose.yml

version: '3.3'
services:
  ldap_server:
      build:
        context: .
        dockerfile: Dockerfile
      environment:
        LDAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD: test1234
        LDAP_BASE_DN: dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
      ports:
        - 389:389
      volumes:
        - ldap_data:/var/lib/ldap
        - ldap_config:/etc/ldap/slapd.d
  ldap_server_admin:
      image: osixia/phpldapadmin:0.7.2
      ports:
        - 8090:80
      environment:
        PHPLDAPADMIN_LDAP_HOSTS: ldap_server
        PHPLDAPADMIN_HTTPS: 'false'
volumes:
  ldap_data:
  ldap_config:

config.cfg

# Config File for LDAPGUI by Carles Mateo
# https://blog.carlesmateo.com
#

# Configuration for working with the prepared Docker
server=127.0.0.1:389
connection=cn=%USERNAME%,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
username=admin_gh
password=admin_gh_pass
query=cn=%LOCATION%,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com

# Carles other tests
#server=ldapslave.carlesmateo.com
#connection=uid=%USERNAME%, cn=users, cn=accounts, dc=demo1, dc=carlesmateo, dc=com
#username=carlesmateo
#password=Secret123
#query=location=%LOCATION%,dc=demo1,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com

bootstrap.ldif

In order to bootstrap the Data on the LDAP Server I use a bootstrap.ldif file copied into the Server.

Credits, I learned this trick in this page: https://medium.com/better-programming/ldap-docker-image-with-populated-users-3a5b4d090aa4

dn: cn=developer,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: Engineer
cn: developer
givenname: developer
sn: Developer
displayname: Developer User
mail: developer@carlesmateo.com
userpassword: developer_pass

dn: cn=maintainer,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: Engineer
cn: maintainer
givenname: maintainer
sn: Maintainer
displayname: Maintainer User
mail: maintainer@carlesmateo.com
userpassword: maintainer_pass

dn: cn=admin,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: Engineer
cn: admin
givenname: admin
sn: Admin
displayname: Admin
mail: admin@carlesmateo.com
userpassword: admin_pass

dn: ou=Groups,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: organizationalUnit
ou: Groups

dn: ou=Users,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
objectclass: organizationalUnit
ou: Users

dn: cn=Admins,ou=Groups,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
cn: Admins
objectclass: groupOfUniqueNames
uniqueMember: cn=admin,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com

dn: cn=Maintaners,ou=Groups,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
changetype: add
cn: Maintaners
objectclass: groupOfUniqueNames
uniqueMember: cn=maintainer,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com
uniqueMember: cn=developer,dc=carlesmateo,dc=com

lib/fileutils.py

You can download this file from the lib folder in my project CTOP.py

More information about programming with tkinter:

https://realpython.com/python-gui-tkinter/#getting-user-input-with-entry-widgets

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/python_gui_programming.htm

https://effbot.org/tkinterbook/entry.htm

About LDAP:

https://ldap3.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Refreshing settings in a Docker immutable image with Python and Flask

This is a trick to restart a Service that is running on a immutable Docker, with some change, and you need to refresh the values very quickly without having to roll the CI/CD Jenkins Pipeline and uploading a new image.

So why would you need to do that?.

I can think about possible scenarios like:

  • Need to roll out an urgent fix in a time critical manner
  • Jenkins is broken
  • Somebody screw it on the git master branch
  • Docker Hub is down
  • GitHub is down
  • Your artifactory is down
  • The lines between your jumpbox or workstation and the secure Server are down and you have really few bandwidth
  • You have to fix something critical and you only have a phone with you and SSH only
  • Maybe the Dockerfile had latest, and the latest image has changed
FROM os:latest

The ideal is that if you work with immutable images, you roll out a new immutable image and that’s it.

But if for whatever reason you need to update this super fast, this trick may become really handy.

Let’s go for it!.

Normally you’ll start your container with a command similar to this:

docker run -d --rm -p 5000:5000 api_carlesmateo_com:v7 prod

The first thing we have to do is to stop the container.

So:

docker ps

Locate your container across the list of running containers and stop it, and then restart without the –rm:

docker stop container_name
docker run -d -p 5000:5000 api_carlesmateo_com:v7 prod

the –rm makes the container to cleanup. By default a container’s file system persists even after the container exits. So don’t start it with –rm.

Ok, so login to the container:

docker exec -it container_name /bin/sh

Edit the config you require to change, for example config.yml

If what you have to update is a password, and is encoded in base64, encode it:

echo -n "ThePassword" | base64
VGhlUGFzc3dvcmQ=

Stop the container. You can do it by stopping the container with docker stop or from inside the container, killing the listening process, probably a Python Flask.

If your Dockerfile ends with something like:

ENTRYPOINT ["./webservice.py"]

And webservice.py has Python Flask code similar to this:

#!/usr/bin/python3
#
# webservice.py
#
# Author: Carles Mateo
# Creation Date: 2020-05-10 20:50 GMT+1
# Description: A simple Flask Web Application
#              Part of the samples of https://leanpub.com/pythoncombatguide
#              More source code for the book at https://gitlab.com/carles.mateo/python_combat_guide
#


from flask import Flask, request
import logging

# Initialize Flask
app = Flask(__name__)


# Sample route so http://127.0.0.1/carles
@app.route('/carles', methods=['GET'])
def carles():
    logging.critical("A connection was established")
    return "200"

logging.info("Initialized...")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=5000, debug=True)

Then you can kill the process, and so ending the container, from inside the container by doing:

ps -ax | grep webservice
 5750 root     56:31 {webservice.py} /usr/bin/python /opt/webservice/webservice.py
kill -9 5790

This will finish the container the same way as docker stop container_name.

Then start the container (not run)

docker start container_name

You can now test from outside or from inside the container. If from inside:

/opt/webservice # wget localhost:5000/carles
Connecting to localhost:5000 (127.0.0.1:5000)
carles               100% |**************************************************************************************************************|     3  0:00:00 ETA
/opt/webservice # cat debug.log
2020-05-06 20:46:24,349 Initialized...
2020-05-06 20:46:24,359  * Running on http://0.0.0.0:5000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
2020-05-06 20:46:24,360  * Restarting with stat
2020-05-06 20:46:24,764 Initialized...
2020-05-06 20:46:24,771  * Debugger is active!
2020-05-06 20:46:24,772  * Debugger PIN: 123-456-789
2020-05-07 13:18:43,890 127.0.0.1 - - [07/May/2020 13:18:43] "GET /carles HTTP/1.1" 200 -

if you don’t use YAML files or what you need is to change the code, all this can be avoided as when you update the Python code, Flash realizes that and reloads. See this line in the logs:

2020-05-07 13:18:40,431  * Detected change in '/opt/webservice/wwebservice.py', reloading

The webservice.py autoreloads because we init Flask with debug set to on.

You can also start a container with shell directly:

sudo docker run -it ctop /bin/bash

Resources for Microservices and Business Domain Solutions for the Cloud Architect / Microservices Architect

First you have to understand that Python, Java and PHP are worlds completely different.

In Python you’ll probably use Flask, and listen to the port you want, inside Docker Container.

In PHP you’ll use a Frameworks like Laravel, or Symfony, or Catalonia Framework (my Framework) :) and a repo or many (as the idea is that the change in one microservice cannot break another it is recommended to have one git repo per Service) and split the requests with the API Gateway and Filters (so /billing/ goes to the right path in the right Server, is like rewriting URLs). You’ll rely in Software to split your microservices. Usually you’ll use Docker, but you have to add a Web Server and any other tools, as the source code is not packet with a Web Server and other Dependencies like it is in Java Spring Boot.

In Java you’ll use Spring Cloud and Spring Boot, and every Service will be auto-contained in its own JAR file, that includes Apache Tomcat and all other Dependencies and normally running inside a Docker. Tcp/Ip listening port will be set at start via command line, or through environment. You’ll have many git repositories, one per each Service.

Using many repos, one per Service, also allows to deploy only that repository and to have better security, with independent deployment tokens.

It is not unlikely that you’ll use one language for some of your Services and another for other, as well as a Database or another, as each Service is owner of their data.

In any case, you will be using CI/CD and your pipeline will be something like this:

  1. Pull the latest code for the Service from the git repository
  2. Compile the code (if needed)
  3. Run the Unit and Integration Tests
  4. Compile the service to an executable artifact (f.e. Java JAR with Tomcat server and other dependencies)
  5. Generate a Machine image with your JAR deployed (for Java. Look at Spotify Docker Plugin to Docker build from Maven), or with Apache, PHP, other dependencies, and the code. Normally will be a Docker image. This image will be immutable. You will probably use Dockerhub.
  6. Machine image will be started. Platform test are run.
  7. If platform tests pass, the service is promoted to the next environment (for example Dev -> Test -> PreProd -> Prod), the exact same machine is started in the next environment and platform tests are repeated.
  8. Before deploying to Production the new Service, I recommend running special Application Tests / Behavior-driven. By this I mean, to conduct tests that really test the functionality of everything, using a real browser and emulating the acts of a user (for example with BeHat, Cucumber or with JMeter).
    I recommend this specially because Microservices are end-points, independent of the implementation, but normally they are API that serve to a whole application. In an Application there are several components, often a change in the Front End can break the application. Imagine a change in Javascript Front End, that results in a call a bit different, for example, with an space before a name. Imagine that the Unit Tests for the Service do not test that, and that was not causing a problem in the old version of the Service and so it will crash when the new Service is deployed. Or another example, imagine that our Service for paying with Visa cards generates IDs for the Payment Gateway, and as a result of the new implementation the IDs generated are returned. With the mocked objects everything works, but when we deploy for real is when we are going to use the actual Bank Payment. This is also why is a good idea to have a PreProduction environment, with PreProduction versions of the actual Services we use (all banks or the GDS for flights/hotel reservation like Galileo or Amadeus have a Test, exactly like Production, Gateway)

If you work with Microsoft .NET, you’ll probably use Azure DevOps.

We IT Engineers, CTOs and Architects, serve the Business. We have to develop the most flexible approaches and enabling the business to release as fast as their need.

Take in count that Microservices is a tool, a pattern. We will use it to bring more flexibility and speed developing, resilience of the services, and speed and independence deploying. However this comes at a cost of complexity.

Microservices is more related to giving flexibility to the Business, and developing according to the Business Domains. Normally oriented to suite an API. If you have an API that is consumed by third party you will have things like independence of Services (if one is down the others will still function), gradual degradation, being able to scale the Services that have more load only, being able to deploy a new version of a Service which is independent of the rest of the Services, etc… the complexity in the technical solution comes from all this resilience, and flexibility.

If your Dev Team is up to 10 Developers or you are writing just a CRUD Web Application, a PoC, or you are an Startup with a critical Time to Market you probably you will not want to use Microservices approach. Is like killing flies with laser cannons. You can use typical Web services approach, do everything in one single Https request, have transactions, a single Database, etc…

But if your team is 100 Developer, like a big eCommerce, you’ll have multiple Teams between 5 and 10 Developers per Business Domain, and you need independence of each Service, having less interdependence. Each Service will own their own Data. That is normally around 5 to 7 tables. Each Service will serve a Business Domain. You’ll benefit from having different technologies for the different needs, however be careful to avoid having Teams with different knowledge that can have hardly rotation and difficult to continue projects when the only 2 or 3 Devs that know that technology leave. Typical benefit scenarios can be having MySql for the Billing Services, but having NoSQL Database for the image catalog, or to store logs of account activity. With Microservices, some services will be calling other Services, often asynchronously, using Queues or Streams, you’ll have Callbacks, Databases for reading, you’ll probably want to have gradual and gracefully failure of your applications, client load balancing, caches and read only databases/in-memory databases… This complexity is in order to protect one Service from the failure of others and to bring it the necessary speed under heavy load.

Here you can find a PDF Document of the typical resources I use for Microservice Projects.

Resources for Microservices and Business Domain Solutions – V.1.7 – By Carles MateoDownload

You can also download it from my github repository:

https://github.com/carlesmateo/awesome-microservices

Do you use other solutions that are not listed?. Leave a message. I’ll investigate them and update the Document, to share with the Community.

Update 2020-03-06: I found this very nice article explaining the same. Microservices are not for everybody and not the default option: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2020/03/04/microservices_last_resort/

Update 2020-03-11: Qcom with 1,600 microservices says that microservices architecture is the las resort: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2020/03/09/monzo_microservices/

Adding my Server as Docker, with PHP Catalonia Framework, explained

Update: 2021-07-23 Ubuntu 19.04 is no longer available, so I updated the article in order to work with Ubuntu 20.04. and with PHP 7.4 and all their dependencies.

The previous day I explained how I migrated my old Server (Amazon Instance) to a more powerful model, with more recent OS, WebServer, etc…

This was interesting under the point of view of dealing with elastic Ip’s, Amazon AWS Volumes, etc… but was a process basically manual. I could have generated an immutable image to start from next time, but this is another discussion, specially because that Server Instance has different base Software, including a MySql Database.

This time I want to explain, step by step, how to containerize my Server, so I can port to different platforms, and I can be independent on what the Server Operating System is. It will work always, as we defined the Operating System for the Docker Container.

So we start to use IaC (Infrastructure as Code).

So first you need to install docker.

So basically if your laptop is an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or 20.04 LTS you have to:

sudo apt install docker.io

Start and Automate Docker

The Docker service needs to be setup to run at startup. To do so, type in each command followed by enter:

sudo systemctl start docker
sudo systemctl enable docker

Create the Dockerfile

For doing this you can use any text editor, but as we are working with IaC why not use a Code Editor?.

You can use the versatile PyCharm, that has modules for understanding Docker and so you can use Control Version like git too.

This is the updated Dockerfile to work with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

FROM ubuntu:20.04

MAINTAINER Carles <carles@carlesmateo.com>

ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

#RUN echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" > /etc/resolv.conf

RUN echo "Europe/Ireland" | tee /etc/timezone

# Note: You should install everything in a single line concatenated with
#       && and finalizing with 
# apt autoremove && apt clean

#       In order to use the less space possible, as every command is a layer
RUN apt update && apt install -y apache2 ntpdate libapache2-mod-php7.4 mysql-server php7.4-mysql php-dev libmcrypt-dev php-pear git && apt autoremove && apt clean

RUN a2enmod rewrite

RUN mkdir -p /www

# In order to activate Debug
# RUN sed -i "s/display_errors = Off/display_errors = On/" /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini 
# RUN sed -i "s/error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_STRICT/error_reporting = E_ALL/" /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini 
# RUN sed -i "s/display_startup_errors = Off/display_startup_errors = On/" /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini 
# To Debug remember to change:
# config/{production.php|preproduction.php|devel.php|docker.php} 
# in order to avoid Error Reporting being set to 0.

ENV PATH_CATALONIA /www/www.cataloniaframework.com/
ENV PATH_CATALONIA_WWW /www/www.cataloniaframework.com/www/
ENV PATH_CATALONIA_CACHE /www/www.cataloniaframework.com/cache/

ENV APACHE_RUN_USER  www-data
ENV APACHE_RUN_GROUP www-data
ENV APACHE_LOG_DIR   /var/log/apache2
ENV APACHE_PID_FILE  /var/run/apache2/apache2.pid
ENV APACHE_RUN_DIR   /var/run/apache2
ENV APACHE_LOCK_DIR  /var/lock/apache2
ENV APACHE_LOG_DIR   /var/log/apache2

RUN mkdir -p $APACHE_RUN_DIR
RUN mkdir -p $APACHE_LOCK_DIR
RUN mkdir -p $APACHE_LOG_DIR
RUN mkdir -p $PATH_CATALONIA
RUN mkdir -p $PATH_CATALONIA_WWW
RUN mkdir -p $PATH_CATALONIA_CACHE

# Remove the default Server
RUN sed -i '/<Directory \/var\/www\/>/,/<\/Directory>/{/<\/Directory>/ s/.*/# var-www commented/; t; d}' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf 

RUN rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

COPY www.cataloniaframework.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/

RUN chmod 777 $PATH_CATALONIA_CACHE
RUN chmod 777 $PATH_CATALONIA_CACHE.
RUN chown --recursive $APACHE_RUN_USER.$APACHE_RUN_GROUP $PATH_CATALONIA_CACHE

RUN ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/www.cataloniaframework.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

# Note: You should clone locally and COPY to the Docker Image
#       Also you should add the .git directory to your .dockerignore file
#       I made this way to show you and for simplicity, having everything
#       in a single file
##RUN git clone https://github.com/cataloniaframework/cataloniaframework_v1_sample_website /www/www.cataloniaframework.com
##RUN git checkout tags/v.1.16-web-1.0
# In order to change profile to Production
# RUN sed -i "s/define('ENVIRONMENT', DOCKER)/define('ENVIRONMENT', PRODUCTION)/" /var/www/www.cataloniaframework.com/config/general.php 
COPY *.php /www/www.cataloniaframework.com/www

# for debugging
#RUN apt-get install -y vim

RUN service apache2 restart

EXPOSE 80

CMD ["/usr/sbin/apache2", "-D", "FOREGROUND"]

The www.cataloniaframework.com.conf file

As you saw in the Dockerfile you have the line:

COPY www.cataloniaframework.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/

This will copy the file www.cataloniaframework.com.conf that must be in the same directory that the Dockerfile file, to the /etc/apache2/sites-available/ folder in the container.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@cataloniaframework.com
    # Uncomment to use a DNS name in a multiple VirtualHost Environment
    #ServerName www.cataloniaframework.com
    #ServerAlias cataloniaframework.com
    DocumentRoot /www/www.cataloniaframework.com/www
    <Directory /www/www.cataloniaframework.com/www/>
            Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
            AllowOverride All
            Order allow,deny
            allow from all
            Require all granted
    </Directory>
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www-cataloniaframework-com-error.log
    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel warn
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www-cataloniaframework-com-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Stopping, starting the docker Service and creating the Catalonia image

service docker stop && service docker start

To build the Docker Image we will do:

docker build -t catalonia . --no-cache

I use the –no-cache so git is pulled and everything is reworked, not kept from cache.

Now we can run the Catalonia Docker, mapping the 80 port.

docker run -d -p 80:80 catalonia

If you want to check what’s going on inside the Docker, you’ll do:

docker ps

And so in this case, we will do:

docker exec -i -t distracted_wing /bin/bash

Finally I would like to check that the web page works, and I’ll use my preferred browser. In this case I will use lynx, the text browser, cause I don’t want Firefox to save things in the cache.