9.7 KiB
Build yourself a CAcert Test Machine for Development
As developers, at some point we all need a machine, whether for raw development, Unit Testing, Integration or System Testing, so that we can be assured that our code is ready to submit to the Software Reviewers and Approvers on its way to deployment in Production.
That machine should be structured and configured to be as close a match as possible to CAcert's production servers.
I have written this document and prepared scripts and other tools to help other Developers easily create such a machine for their own purposes.
At present the machine that we are trying to match is a very old Debian machine with PHP 5 installed. Since we can no longer install a version of Debian that is as old as is running in Production, I found that Debian 8 would still install, at least at present, and PHP 5.7 can still be installed on that version of Debian.
Assumptions and Expectations
This document will describe the use of VirtualBox to create a working copy of CAcert's Test Server for use in development of bug fixes and other code intended for deployment to CAcert's servers.
It will describe all of the pieces that were used to create a working Debian 8 system, complete with various helper tools that allow this system to be used in a stand-alone manner, effectively air-gapped from the Internet and E-Mail.
Since the CAcert code makes use of E-Mail for validating users and other internal purposes, this code must trap any outgoing e-mail so that it can be examined and then returned to the system to fulfil those validation purposes.
For future code development, much of this instruction can be repeated, with principally, replacement of the Debian ISO and, therefore, upgrade of the database server and PHP version within.
Software Development and Code Submission in CAcert
For those who are unfamiliar, there is a good document in the CAcert code tree, describing the process of managing the code involved in a CAcert bug fix or feature submission. The current version can be found at Contributing. Please note that you should only make the minimum code changes necessary for each Pull Request ( PR ), to assist the people involved in QA and Software Assesment.
Pre-requisites
- Internet connection
- Not for testing, but for obtaining the software that we are putting into our virtual machine.
- VirtualBox1
- Remember that the OS of the host system does not have to match the OS of the virtual machine.
- Membership in the CAcert Development group and Mailing List: cacert-devel@lists.cacert.org.
- Access to our Bug Tracker Mantis.
Everything else that I installed, I will provide in the instructions.
Create a running Debian
VirtualBox
For those of us familiar with VirtualBox, this is relatively straight-forward. I will try to ease the path for the others. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and other CAcert developers on the CAcert Developers mailing list cacert-devel@lists.cacert.org.
VirtualBox can be found as an installable package for most modern systems, whether Linux, as I run, MacOS ( OS X ) or Windows, as well as Solaris!5
For our purposes, most modern machines, including laptops, can run VirtualBox and our Development VM.
Debian Versions
Since CAcert's current production systems are running on ten-year-old versions of Debian, for any bug fixing or enhancements to the current system, we need to try and reproduce that environment as much as possible.
For that reason, I am specifying Debian 7, Stretch, as our standard Development Environment, even though Debian 8, Jessie, is the oldest still supported version of Debian.
During experimentation, I found that Debian 6 could not be used after installation, since a critical part of our environment, git from that version of Debian, will not work with GitHUB or other parts of our ecosystem.
I also found that PHP 5 is still standard in Debian 7, where it is not in Debian 8, but has been replaced with PHP 7.
Creating our Development and Test Platform
If you have not yet installed VirtualBox, do so now.
Then create a new VM, using the default values offered by VirtualBox. When asked about memory, allocate at least 1GB, but no more than half of the memory installed in the host machine. Disks will normally be created as compressed devices, so that you will not use as much as you select for the disk size except under exceptional circumstances.
Mount the Debian ISO, and start the VM.
First Installation Steps
- Aptitude
- I prefer the command line version of aptitude to apt-get, so install it on every machine that I build.
- It comes pre-installed in Debian 7, so do:
- aptitude update
- aptitude safe-upgrade
- And then install the following tools with "aptitude install vim git rsync"
- Vim
- Git
- Rsync
- Others?
- Create a useful directory
- mkdir tools
- Create a source directory
- mkdir cacert
Installing PHP 5
PHP 5 is a normal part of Debian 7, so does not require any special effort to install.
- Installing PHP
- aptitude update
- aptitude install php5 php5-mysql
Installing MySQL 5
MySQL 5 is a normal part of Debian 7, so does not require any special effort to install.
- Installing MySQL
- aptitude update
- aptitude install mysql-server-5.5 mysql-client
Installing Mail and MailHog
- Configuring Exim4
- cd /etc/exim4
- vim update-exim4.conf.conf
- find line with dc_smarthost
- insert localhost::1025 between quotes
- Save and Exit
- Restart Exim by service exim4 restart
- This will compile the configuration file
- Downloading MailHog and Installing
- Finishing Configuration
Apache
- Editing Virtual Host
- cd
- cd tools
- wget setenv.conf
- vim setenv.conf
- Some of the values in this file need to be set for your environment, others can be left
- cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
- sudo vim default
- duplicate the /var/www/html Directory block
- change /var/www/html in one of them to your cacert directory followed by: cacert-devel/www
- Set the Document Root to that same directory, like: /home/<your ID>/cacert/cacert-devel/www
- Read the file setenv.conf from your tools directory into a blank space in default between the <VirtualHost and </VirtualHost lines.
Editing PHP.ini
- For the moment, we will not edit the php.ini file
Installing Test Manager
- cd
- cd cacert
- git clone https://github.com/CAcertOrg/cacert-testmgr.git
Installing Source Code
Note that these instructions describe checking out a generic, read-only copy of the master cacert-devel repository from GitHUB. In most cases, Developers will be working from Forks of this repository under their own names in GitHUB, and will have created appropriate bug-<number> branches related to their work.
- cd
- cd cacert
- git clone https://github.com/CAcertOrg/cacert-devel.git
- git checkout <desired working branch>
Any More Steps
At this point, you now should have a working VM ready to start work.
Starting a Development Session
Starting MailHog
The first step in any development session is to start MailHog running, since Exim4 and Apache will start when the VM start.
Etc
Footnotes
VirtualBox can be obtained either from a Linux distribution repository or directly from VirtualBox.↩︎
You can download Debian ISOs from Debian, but finding older ones, such as the one that we want, can be a bit tricky. I would normally use the NetInst version because it is much smaller, and therefore quicker to download, but might be a bit longer to install than a full DVD copy. Note that while the NetInst version is less than 300 MB, there are three DVD images, totalling about 13 GB! However, only the first DVD is required for most purposes. Since the NetInst version requires a working Debian Mirror, while the DVD does not, for anything older than Debian 8, only the DVD ISO will work successfully.↩︎
Note that the source for Debian CD and DVD images older that the current version is Debian Archive. The NetInst version can be found in the iso-cd directory.↩︎
I did try downloading the DVD image for Debian 6, Squeeze, and created a Virtual Box VM using that. Each disk image was 4.4 GB, so took a while to download. I only needed to download DVD-1 for the install, named debian-6.0.10-amd64-DVD-1.iso. However, after I created the Debian 6 version, I discovered that the git in that version would not work with GitHUB.↩︎
VirtualBox can be obtained either from a Linux distribution repository or directly from VirtualBox.↩︎