Hosted Box

Hosted Box is an official, pre-packaged Vagrant box that provides you a wonderful development environment without requiring you to install PHP, a web server, and any other server software on your local machine.

Vagrant provides a simple, elegant way to manage and provision Virtual Machines and this is a recommended Vagrant setup to get loaded with core development tools to build a powerful PHP application.

Join us on Slack to chat with other Hosted contributors!

Contents

• Overview
  • Requirements
  • Packages Included
• Install
  • Installing the Vagrant Box
  • Installing the Hosted Box
  • Configuring
    • Memory and CPU
    • Shared folders
    • Nginx sites
    • Configuring the hosts file
  • Launching the Hosted Box
• Daily usage
  • Accessing Hosted Box globally
  • Connecting via SSH
  • Connecting to databases
  • Adding additional sites
  • Ports
    • Forwarding additional ports
  • Sharing your environment
  • Network interfaces
  • Updating Hosted Box
  • Provider specific Settings
    • VirtualBox
  • Mail catcher
• Troubleshooting
• License

Overview

We use the default hosted/xenial64 box from Vagrant Cloud for compatibility. If you choose to use a 64-bit ISO you may need to update your BIOS to enable virtualization with AMD-V, Intel VT-x or VIA VT.

When you provision Vagrant for the first time it's always the longest procedure (vagrant up). Vagrant will download the entire Linux OS if you've never used Vagrant or the hosted/xenial64 Box. Afterwards, booting time is fast.

Requirements

• Operating System: Windows, Linux, or OSX
• Virtualbox >= 5.0
• Vagrant >= 1.9

Packages Included

• Ansible
• Beanstalkd
• Blackfire
• Composer
• Git
• goreplace
• Mailhog
• Memcached
• MongoDB
• MySQL
• Nginx
• Ngrok
• Node.js (with Yarn, Bower, Grunt, and Gulp)
• PHIVE
• PHP 7.1
• PHPMD
• PHP_CodeSniffer
• Phalcon
• Phing
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• Sqlite3
• Ubuntu 16.04
• Zephir

Install

Installing the Vagrant Box

Once VirtualBox and Vagrant have been installed, you should add the hosted/xenial64 box to your Vagrant installation using the following command in your terminal. It will take a few minutes to download the box, depending on your Internet connection speed:

vagrant box add hosted/xenial64

If this command fails, make sure your Vagrant installation is up to date.

Installing the Hosted Box

You may install Hosted Box by simply cloning the repository. Consider cloning the repository into a Hosted folder within your "home" directory, as the Hosted Box box will serve as the host to all of your hosted projects:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/eldorplus/hosted.git Hosted

The master branch will always contain the latest stable version of Hosted Box. If you wish to check older versions or newer ones currently under development, please switch to the relevant branch/tag.

You can find the latest stable version on the Github Release Page:

# Clone the desired release...
git checkout v2.2.2

Once you have cloned the Hosted Box repository, run the install command from the Hosted Box root directory to create the Settings.yml or Settings.json configuration file. The Settings.yml or Settings.json file will be placed in the Hosted Box directory:

# macOS || Linux
./init

rem Windows
init.bat

Now you are ready to provision your Virtual Machine, run:

vagrant up

Configuring

Memory and CPU

By default this setup uses 2GB RAM. You can change this in Settings.yml or Settings.json and simply run vagrant reload:

memory: 4096

You can also use more than one core if you like, simply change this line in the same file:

cpus: 4

Shared folders

The folders property of the Settings.yml or Settings.json file lists all of the folders you wish to share with your Hosted Box environment. As files within these folders are changed, they will be kept in sync between your local machine and the Hosted Box environment. You may configure as many shared folders as necessary:

folders:
    - map: ~/sites
      to: /home/vagrant/sites

To enable NFS, just add a simple flag to your synced folder configuration:

folders:
    - map: ~/sites
      to: /home/vagrant/sites
      type: "nfs"

You may also pass any options supported by Vagrant's Synced Folders by listing them under the options key:

folders:
    - map: ~/sites
      to: /home/vagrant/sites
      type: "nfs"
      options:
            rsync__args: ["--verbose", "--archive", "--delete", "-zz"]
            rsync__exclude: ["node_modules"]

NOTE: macOS users probably will need to install vagrant-bindfs plugin to fix shared folder (NFS) permission issue:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-bindfs

Nginx sites

The sites property allows you to easily map a "domain" to a folder on your Hosted Box environment. A sample site configuration is included in the Settings.yml or Settings.json file. You may add as many sites to your Hosted Box environment as necessary. Hosted Box can serve as a convenient, virtualized environment for every Hosted project you are working on:

sites:
    - map: laravel.app
      to:  /home/vagrant/sites/laravel/public

You can use the type parameter to specify the type of Nginx configuration for the site. For example:

sites:
    - map:  laravel.app
      to:   /home/vagrant/sites/laravel/public
      type: laravel

The default type is laravel.

If the desired type is not allowed laravel will be used as fallback.

Available types:

• phalcon
• slayer
• phanbook
• proxy
• spa
• silverstripe
• symfony2
• statamic
• laravel

Feel free to suggest a new type of Nginx configuration through opening a New Feature Request.

If you change the sites property after provisioning the Hosted Box, you should re-run vagrant reload --provision to update the Nginx configuration on the virtual machine.

Configuring the hosts file

You must add the "domains" for your Nginx sites to the hosts file on your machine. The hosts file will redirect requests for your Hosted sites into your Hosted Box machine. On Mac and Linux, this file is located at /etc/hosts. On Windows, it is located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. The lines you add to this file will look like the following:

192.168.127.13  hosted.app

Make sure the IP address listed is the one set in your Settings.yml or Settings.json file. Once you have added the domain to your hosts file and launched the Vagrant box you will be able to access the site via your web browser:

http://hosted.app

NOTE: To enable adding new sites to the hosts file automatically use vagrant-hostsupdater plugin:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostsupdater

Launching the Hosted Box

Once you have edited the Settings.yml or Settings.json or Settings.json to your liking, run the vagrant up command from your Hosted Box directory (for example $HOME/sites). Vagrant will boot the virtual machine and automatically configure your shared folders and Nginx sites.

To destroy the machine, you may use the vagrant destroy --force command.

Daily usage

Accessing Hosted Box globally

Sometimes you may want to vagrant up your Hosted Box machine from anywhere on your filesystem. You can do this on Mac or Linux systems by adding a Bash function to your Bash profile. On Windows, you may accomplish this by adding a "batch" file to your PATH. These scripts will allow you to run any Vagrant command from anywhere on your system and will automatically point that command to your Hosted Box installation:

Mac || Linux

function box()
{
    ( cd $HOME/Hosted && vagrant $* )
}

NOTE: Make sure to tweak the $HOME/sites path in the function to the location of your actual Hosted Box installation. Once the function is installed, you may run commands like box up or box ssh from anywhere on your system.

Windows

Create a box.bat batch file anywhere on your machine with the following contents:

@echo off

set cwd=%cd%
set box=C:\workspace

cd /d %box% && vagrant %*
cd /d %cwd%

set cwd=
set box=

NOTE: Make sure to tweak the example C:\workspace path in the script to the actual location of your Hosted Box installation. After creating the file, add the file location to your PATH. You may then run commands like box up or box ssh from anywhere on your system.

Connecting via SSH

You can SSH into your virtual machine by issuing the vagrant ssh terminal command from your Hosted Box directory.

But, since you will probably need to SSH into your Hosted Box machine frequently, consider adding the "function" described above to your host machine to quickly SSH into the Hosted Box.

Connecting to databases

To connect to your MySQL, Postgres or MongoDB database from your host machine's database client, you should connect to 127.0.0.1 and port 33060 (MySQL), 54320 (Postgres) or 27017 (MongoDB). The username and password for databases is hosted / secret.

NOTE: You should only use these non-standard ports when connecting to the databases from your host machine. You will use the default 3306 and 5432 ports in your Hosted database configuration file since Hosted is running within the Virtual Machine.

To access to the interacive db console from Hosted Box type:

• Postgres: psql -U hosted -h localhost (password secret)
• MySQL: mysql (password not needed for CLI tool)
• MongoDB: mongo (password not needed for CLI tool)

Adding additional sites

Once your Hosted Box environment is provisioned and running, you may want to add additional Nginx sites for your applications. You can run as many Hosted projects as you wish on a single Hosted Box environment. To add an additional site, simply add the site to your Settings.yml or Settings.json file:

sites:
    - map: hosted.app
      to:  /home/vagrant/workspace/hosted/public
    - map: pdffiller.local
      to:  /home/vagrant/workspace/pdffiller/public
    - map: blog.local
      to:  /home/vagrant/workspace/blog/public

If Vagrant is not managing your "hosts" file automatically, you may need to add the new site to that file as well:

192.168.127.13  hosted.app
192.168.127.13  pdffiller.app
192.168.127.13  blog.app

NOTE: To enable adding new sites to the hosts file automatically use vagrant-hostsupdater plugin:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostsupdater

Once the site has been added, run the vagrant reload --provision command from your Hosted Box directory.

Ports

By default, the following ports are forwarded to your Hosted Box environment:

Forwarding additional ports

If you wish, you may forward additional ports to the Hosted Box, as well as specify their protocol:

ports:
    - send: 50000
      to: 5000
    - send: 7777
      to: 777
      protocol: udp

Sharing your environment

Sometimes you may wish to share what you're currently working on with coworkers or a client. Vagrant has a built-in way to support this via vagrant share; however, this will not work if you have multiple sites configured in your Settings.yml or Settings.json file.

To solve this problem, Hosted Box includes its own share command. To get started, SSH into your Hosted Box machine via vagrant ssh and run share <your-site-here>, for example: share blog.local. This will share your site from your Settings.yml or Settings.json configuration file. Of course, you may substitute any of your other configured sites for blog.local:

share blog.local

After running the command, you will see an Ngrok screen appear which contains the activity log and the publicly accessible URLs for the shared site. If you would like to specify a custom region, subdomain, or other Ngrok runtime option, you may add them to your share command:

share blog.local -region=eu -subdomain=hostedgelist

NOTE: Remember, Vagrant is inherently insecure and you are exposing your virtual machine to the Internet when running the share command.

Network interfaces

The networks property of the Settings.yml or Settings.json configures network interfaces for your Hosted Box environment. You may configure as many interfaces as necessary:

networks:
    - type: "private_network"
      ip: "192.168.50.99"

To enable a bridged interface, configure a bridge setting and change the network type to public_network:

networks:
    - type: "private_network"
      ip: "192.168.50.99"
      bridge: "en1: Wi-Fi (AirPort)"

To enable DHCP, just remove the ip option from this configuration:

networks:
    - type: "private_network"
      bridge: "en1: Wi-Fi (AirPort)"

Updating Hosted Box

You can update Hosted Box in two simple steps.

1. First, you should update the Vagrant box using the vagrant box update command:

vagrant box update

2. Next, you need to update the Hosted Box source code. If you cloned the repository you can simply

git pull origin master

at the location you originally cloned the repository.

The new version of Hosted Box will contain updated or amended configuration files:

• Settings.yml or Settings.json
• .bash_aliases
• after_provision.sh

When you run the command ./install (or install.bat) the Hosted Box creates these files in the root directory. However, if the files already exist, they will not be overwritten.

We recommend that you always take backups of those files, and remove them from the project so that the new updated ones can be copied over. You can then compare your own files with the hosted box ones to apply your personalized changes and take advantage of the new features offered by the update.

Provider specific Settings

VirtualBox

By default, Hosted Box configures the natdnshostresolver setting to on. This allows Hosted Box to use your host operating system's DNS Settings. If you would like to override this behavior, add the following lines to your Settings.yml or Settings.json file:

natdnshostresolver: off

Mail catcher

By default, Hosted Box redirects all PHP emails to MailHog (instead of sending them to the outside world). You can access the MailHog UI at http://localhost:8025/ (or whatever domain you have configured in Settings.yml or Settings.json).

Troubleshooting

Problem:

An error occurred in the underlying SSH library that Vagrant uses. The error message is shown below. In many cases, errors from this library are caused by ssh-agent issues. Try disabling your SSH agent or removing some keys and try again. If the problem persists, please report a bug to the net-ssh project. timeout during server version negotiating

Solution:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest

Problem:

Vagrant was unable to mount VirtualBox shared folders. This is usually because the filesystem "vboxsf" is not available. This filesystem is made available via the VirtualBox Guest Additions and kernel module. Please verify that these guest additions are properly installed in the guest. This is not a bug in Vagrant and is usually caused by a faulty Vagrant box. For context, the command attempted was:

mount -t vboxsf -o uid=900,gid=900 vagrant /vagrant

Solution:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest

PHAR COMPOSER

php -d phar.readonly=off ./phar-composer.phar build command --no-dev
``

## License

Hosted Box is open source software licensed under the New BSD License.
See the LICENSE.txt file for more. <br>
Copyright (c) 2011-2017, Hosted Team