Flarum Flockport Container

raul

I already posted about this in the beta thread. Flockport is an App store for server apps like Flarum and the goal is to make it easy for end users to use these apps, without the need to install and configure php, mysql, nginx etc.

The model is you download the container, start it, and can access the app in your browser. You can download the Flarum container here. For those who would prefer not to register to just try this, you can change the 'download' in the download url to 'download2'.

You need to install LXC to run this. LXC is around a 3MB installation and is available in most mainline Linux distributions Debian, Ubuntu, Centos, etc. Flockport also provides a multi distribution installer to make it easy for users.

We currently have over 40 apps that users can use in minutes. Flockport is based on Linux containers, there is a light learning curve with Linux containers but after that, you can use any app from the app store in minutes. Just download the container, start it and access the admin screen on the browser. We have tons of documentation to help users along.

A container is like a lightweight VM and is supported in the Linux kernel so it works across Linux distributions. A container gives you bare metal performance so no virtualization overhead, is portable across servers and easier to use. This means you can move your apps like Flarum across servers with all the data easily and are thus not tied to any server or provider. Think about that for a second, your apps are portable! You can also makes clones and snapshots so this makes things like backups and upgrades simpler.

The Flarum container for instance is 110MB and has PHP, MySQL, Nginx and Flarum configured and you simply download the container and access the app on your browser.

The wider goal of Flockport is to make it easier for end users to use apps like Wordpress, Discourse, Drupal, Flarum etc. We intend to tie up with cloud providers so users can deploy directly to any cloud, and in the medium term complete the cycle so everyone from users, app developers like Toby and Franz and cloud and VPS providers benefit meaningfully.

I am personally thrilled with how Flarum is turning out. FluxBB was fast, and Esotalk was minimal. Now combine the two and we have fantastic potential. It's not easy to get it right from a coding and design perspective but with Toby and Franz I am sure we are going to get there. PHP based forums were becoming stodgy and newer looking forums were based on Node or Ruby. I have no issues with either but there are more complex to set up and run. PHP is easier to both setup and run, and Flarum provides a much needed PHP based option for a more modern looking forum for end users.

rdn

""Nginx 1.4.7, PHP 5.5, MySQL 5.5""

That is way too old for Nginx.
Nginx is on 1.9.4 now, PHP is on 5.6.12

raul

@rdn - Thanks for the feedback! Yes, 1.4.7 is getting a bit old but it works perfectly. The reason for that is we try to use the distributions default as far as possible. The idea is to provide a base environment that just works out of the box. And more experienced users can customise as they require.

For instance for Flarum we had to use dotdeb repos for PHP as Flarum requires PHP 5.5. You can easily install a more updated Nginx in a few seconds simply by using apt-get install Nginx inside the container. That will update Nginx in the container seamlessly.

Some of our Alpine Linux containers do have Nginx 1.6 and 1.8 and when we release the Flarum container based on Alpine Linux (Next week) it will be Nginx 1.8. Some of our Wordpress containers also use HHVM but its not the default.

pavs

I was just thinking about something like this earlier today. Flarium as an standalone "App" with its own database without having to rely on having to install all the dependencies. While not exactly what I had in mind, but prolly close to it, since I don't properly understand containers yet.

Question: Would I be able to move a "container-ed app" from one os and use it one another os with all my data intact?

raul

Hi Pavs, yes, you can move the Flarum container across servers, providers and any Linux OS i.e. Fedora, CentOS, Debian, Arch, Ubuntu etc with the app and your data intact. That's one of the big advantages of containers.

We use Debian Wheezy for our 64 bit containers. Alpine Linux 64 bit is an additional option for some of the apps. For 32 bit containers we use Ubuntu Precise. Though we are going to stop providing 32 bit containers. You can run these containers on any Linux OS and move them around.

For instance suppose you are hosting on your own server, and want to move to a cloud provider, simply zip the Flarum container and move it to the new server. Similarly suppose you don't like your cloud or VPS provider anymore, again simply zip your Flarum container and move to another provider. So you are not stuck to any provider, server or a specific variant of Linux.

pavs

raul Thanks really interesting stuff I have already downloaded flockport gonna play with it a little bit.

raul

I just uploaded a 2 min screencast on using the Flarum container. As you can see it's quite simple and end users don't have to go though the hassle of installing and configuring PHP, Mysql, Nginx etc and can go straight to using the Flarum app in their browser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nt8UDHvD7k

raul

We have been rolling out Micro Containers at Flockport and we just added a Flarum Micro Container based on Alpine Linux.

Micro containers are based on Alpine Linux and are a fraction of the size of normal containers based on Debian or Ubuntu. The Flarum Micro Container weighs in at just 30MB. This includes the container OS, webstack and Flarum!

This has an updated stack with Nginx 1.8, PHP 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5.

syntactile

I've got an Ubuntu Digital Ocean droplet with Flockport's Flarum container running on it and I've walked through the guides a few times but all I'm seeing is the default Nginx welcome. How do I troubleshoot?

Kulga

syntactile Probably got a index.html file located at /var/www/index.html?
Just a wild guess. I don't know anything about containers..

raul

@syntactile Good job getting so far! A lot of new users have problems understanding how containers work, but once you get the hang of it will be awesome! Since you are seeing the Nginx welcome page you are probably missing step 3.

Once the container is running in Digital Ocean you need to do 3 things.

Get the container IP

lxc-ls -f

Forward the Digital Ocean IP port 80 to container port 80 i.e. if your DO IP is 10.10.10.10 and container IP is 10.0.3.175 run the command below in the Digital Ocean droplet

    iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -i eth0 -p TCP -d 10.10.10.10/32 --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 10.0.3.175:80

On your host i.e. where you are running your browser - edit the /etc/hosts and add an entry with Digital Ocean public IP and myflarum.org.

10.10.10.10 myflarum.org

Now when you enter myflarum.org in the browser you should get to the flarum app.

On Windows the host file is in /windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts. On OSX its in /etc/hosts or /private/etc/hosts

Please refer to the Flockport Start Page and the Flockport Guide

Tips

You can access the container by using:

lxc-attach -n flarum

Passwords are in the flarum.pass file in the root folder of the container. See Flockport Conventions

Note You only need port forwarding when running containers in VMs or in a VPS. This makes the container port 80 available on VM or VPS port 80. When running the container on your local system you would simply add the container IP and myflarum.org to your local system's hosts file and access it in your browser.

10.0.3.175   myflarum.org

syntactile

Aha! I didn't realize myflarum.org wasn't just a placeholder for "Whatever you want to name it"

Thanks for the help raul

EDIT: New trouble. RouteNotFound after doing some Admin configuration...

Flarum\Http\RouteNotFoundException thrown with message ""

Stacktrace:
#14 Flarum\Http\RouteNotFoundException in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/flarum/core/src/Http/RouterMiddleware.php:60
#13 Flarum\Http\RouterMiddleware:invoke in <#unknown>:0
#12 call_user_func in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/zendframework/zend-stratigility/src/Dispatch.php:79
#11 Zend\Stratigility\Dispatch:invoke in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/zendframework/zend-stratigility/src/Next.php:111
#10 Zend\Stratigility\Next:invoke in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/flarum/core/src/Api/Middleware/ReadJsonParameters.php:32
#9 Flarum\Api\Middleware\ReadJsonParameters:invoke in <#unknown>:0
#8 call_user_func in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/zendframework/zend-stratigility/src/Dispatch.php:79
#7 Zend\Stratigility\Dispatch:invoke in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/zendframework/zend-stratigility/src/Next.php:111
#6 Zend\Stratigility\Next:invoke in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/flarum/core/src/Forum/Middleware/LoginWithCookie.php:47
#5 Flarum\Forum\Middleware\LoginWithCookie:invoke in <#unknown>:0
#4 call_user_func in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/zendframework/zend-stratigility/src/Dispatch.php:79
#3 Zend\Stratigility\Dispatch:invoke in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/zendframework/zend-stratigility/src/Next.php:111
#2 Zend\Stratigility\Next:invoke in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/zendframework/zend-stratigility/src/MiddlewarePipe.php:76
#1 Zend\Stratigility\MiddlewarePipe:invoke in /var/www/flarum/flarum/vendor/zendframework/zend-diactoros/src/Server.php:166
#0 Zend\Diactoros\Server:listen in /var/www/flarum/index.php:60

crimsonred36

raul How would I go about running flarum in a container on my homelab VM server? The container subnet (10.0.1.0/24) is not routable from my ISP router, but I have forwarded port 80 to my VM (in the 10.0.0.0/24 network) which is running the container. So when I hit my public IP, the traffic is getting translated to the VM IP. I added an iptables NAT rule on the VM for the destination VM-IP to get translate to the container IP, and I added the VM IP in the hosts file and mapped it to the forum URL I'm using.

I can get the nginx page now, but can't understand how to get the forum page.

Edit: I updated the server_name line nginx file at /etc/nginx/sites-available/flarum with the URL for my forum, and now I get a page where the only thing is a link to myflarum.org. Sorry I'm a bit new to nginx/web hosting.

raul

syntactile

I am just retesting the containers so see if we get the same error. It's a good idea to clone the container or unzip from the tar file so you have a fresh copy to work with.

We are using standard PHP packages; 5.5 from Dotdeb for the Wheezy container and PHP 5.6 from the Alpine Repos for the Alpine Container. Flarum needs some extra php packages and we tried to make sure all those are installed; php-json, php-ctype, php-dom, php-openssl, php-pdo_mysql. This could be a missing package, a config error or a bug of some sort.

Regarding the URL Flockport containers are configured to be available at myappname.org by default so for flarum it would be myflarum.org. We are using Nginx as the web server and it is simpler and better with proper URLs. You can change this by editing the flarum file in /etc/nginx/sites-available/flarum and changing the URL to your preference. Don't forget to restart Nginx and setting your /etc/hosts file appropriately.

Toby

syntactile Did you change the custom homepage setting? Incorrectly setting that can cause a RouteNotFoundException (known issue).

syntactile

Toby That was the ticket. Good catch.

(raul I think the container's behaving just fine in light of the issue Toby referenced!)

raul

@crimsonred36 would the below be right?

Homelab --> VM --> Container

This is a nested network. Is your VM IP accessible from the host on which you are browsing from?

First thing is to port forward VM IP 80 to Container IP 80. I think since you are getting the Nginx page you have done this.
Second thing is to edit the /etc/hosts file of your browser machine. Associate the VM IP with the Flarum container URL here.

At this point entering myflarum.org should get you to the flarum page.

valgrid

Would it be possible to include slanger in the container? See this post (and discussion).

raul

@valgrid I have to learn more about slanger but at the outset it a ruby app. We already have a Ruby Stack Container available for download, so it should be pretty quick to install Slanger in it, and then have Flarum consume it over the network or a socket.

This way we will have 2 containers, one Flarum and one Slanger. We could also have it all in one container but given the size of Ruby containers - Discourse is our largest container at 350MB, better to keep it separate.

We will try to get this going and update the thread. Anyone else familiar with Ruby and Slanger please give this a shot.

valgrid

@raul there was another suggestion in the thread. Called Ipe, it is written in Go and easily compiled, after that you only have one 7MB binary and one ~450Byte sized config file, so it would be much easier to package and configure (with only one container).

I don't know how this server performs, but it seems to be a better solution for a simple and lightweight Flarum container.

Thank you for your packaging work!