Lightmin Files

Lightmin Ubuntu Server 12.04-based Dev VM for VirtualBox
========================================================

Author:		William Hutson <wilrnh@gmail.com>
Description:	VM image built on Ubuntu Server 12.04 configured with a development environment for Lightmin.

Virtual Machine
---------------

This VM image is built with VirtualBox 4.1. with the following configuration:
Base Memory:	256MB
CPU:		1 Count, 100% cap, PAE/NX enabled (required for Ubuntu 12.04)
Video:		12MB Memory, Remote Desktop Server disabled
Audio:		Disabled
Storage:	1 IDE (CD/DVD), 1 SATA (VDI dynamic 1.8GB virtual disk)
Network:	1 Bridged adapter
USB:		Enabled, no filters
Shared Folders:	None

Software
--------

The OS is a base install of Ubuntu Server 12.04. The following additional software were installed:

Tasksel:
- OpenSSH
- LAMP

Packages:
- git
- nginx
- php5-cgi, php5-fpm

Users/Accounts
--------------

There are two user accounts added:
- ubuntu (admin user, sudo-enabled)
- lightmin (non-sudoer, hosts the Lightmin application in its home directory)

Unless otherwise stated, all passwords default to "lightmin".

Using the VM
------------

This VM is intended mainly for development and testing of Lightmin. It should not be used in a production environment.

1. Start the VM
	The VM was built with minimal requirements. A low memory and CPU footprint means that it can run side by side a regular dev session on a host machine without imposing too much. It was also built to be run as a headless VM, having OpenSSH installed and configured to enable remote administration (see Users/Accounts).

2. Explore the VM
	The VM was built with the common hosting server configuration in mind to provide an intuitive starting point environment for developing Lightmin in. Although a LAMP stack was installed, it was not configured beyond its defaults. However, Nginx/PHP-CGI was additionally installed and configured to provide web-server and FastCGI services for the Lightmin application. A custom init.d service was installed to launch PHP-CGI as a FastCGI server for Lightmin. A "domains" directory was created in "/home" to hold the home directories for new domains to be hosted on the server (including lightmin). Beyond these, not many other changes were made to the base install.

3. Prep the VM
	Once the VM is successfully fully booted and running, the first thing you should do is check for package updates. Next, login as the "lightmin" user and git-pull the public_html directory; this is the directory that holds a read-only clone of Lightmin, which contains the application and supporting scripts. This ensures that you're working with the latest application code. Then ensure your host machine can resolve the VM's IP from the hostname "lightmin"; this can be accomplished by editing "hosts" file (/etc/hosts on Linuxes, somewhere on Windows), or updating local DNS if there's one on your network.

4. Test the VM
	With an updated VM with the latest application code, you're ready to test the Lightmin Dev VM out. On your host machine, open your favorite browser and load up "http://lightmin". If all goes well, you should be looking at the latest Lightmin GUI. If not, ndb, check out the Bible, wiki, and discussion forums for help.

5. Dev (the VM?)
	Since the VM is probably running in headless mode, you may need to use a combination of SSH and SFTP filesystem mounts to effectively play with the application code and environment from your host machine. If your host is Ubuntu, you probably have all the tools already. Otherwise, there are a number of other open-source applications available (Sourceforge?) for both Linuxes and Windows, probably Macs too. With your dev environment setup, go through the normal Git routine of pulling, branching, commiting and sending your patches!