If you wanted to see a list of services available on your Linux server/desktop, try the following command:
systemctl list-unit-files --type=service
Upon executing this command, you'll be able to see a list of services along with their statuses i.e whether the service is enabled or disabled.
This can come in handy if you want to know the status of a specific service like nginx:
systemctl list-unit-files --type=service | grep "nginx"
Hope you found this tip useful.
A short tutorial on how to containerize your Laravel application and use it for testing and development purposes.
Since I started exploring Docker containers during my spare time, I learnt how to containerize a Laravel application using Docker Compose.
In this guide, I'll show you how to containerize your application and by the end of this tutorial, you'll have your application running on four separate service containers:
php7.4-fpm.mysql-80.I tried this on my personal laptop that runs on Fedora Workstation 36 and hopefully, it should work on Windows and macOS as well. If you are a Windows user, I would recommend you to try WSL2 with Ubuntu installed in it.
First, you need to create a Dockerfile for your app service in your project's root directory:
touch Dockerfile
vim Dockerfile
In this tutorial, I'll be using PHP7.4 but you can use any version that you need. Here you go:
FROM php:7.4-fpm
# Arguments defined in docker-compose.yml
ARG user
ARG uid
# Install system dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
git \
curl \
libpng-dev \
libonig-dev \
libxml2-dev \
zip \
unzip
# Clear cache
RUN apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
# Install PHP extensions
RUN docker-php-ext-install pdo_mysql mbstring exif pcntl bcmath gd
# Get latest Composer
COPY --from=composer:latest /usr/bin/composer /usr/bin/composer
# Create system user to run Composer and Artisan Commands
RUN useradd -G www-data,root -u $uid -d /home/$user $user
RUN mkdir -p /home/$user/.composer && \
chown -R $user:$user /home/$user
# Set working directory
WORKDIR /var/www
USER $user
So, what's happening in the configuration above is that, it pulls a PHP7.4-FPM image from Docker Hub. Next, it'll define the user of the service and install all the necessary dependencies that are given above and set the working directory to /var/www/. The last step will change to the newly created user, which would make sure that you are using the service as a normal user.
Again, if you are a bit playful, try configuring it to however you want it and see if it works.
I have been following some tutorials and I liked the idea of creating dedicated directories to organize your files related to configuring each service container.
Create a directory named .docker in your project's root directory:
mkdir -p .docker
Go to .docker directory and create nginx directory:
mkdir -p nginx
Now let's set up the NGINX service by creating a .conf file:
touch myservice.conf
Now, copy the following configuration to your .conf file:
server {
listen 80;
index index.php index.html;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
root /var/www/public;
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass app:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
}
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
gzip_static on;
}
}
Since this is a Laravel application, you can skip this step by running migrations and seeding your database or you can try creating a directory inside the .docker folder to store your MySQL related configuration:
mkdir -p mysql
Once created, create a file named init_db.sql that would contain your entire database dump to be seeded once you run your docker service.
This the configuration I have used to create four separate services, please take a look and feel free to modify it based on your requirements.
In this configuration, all services will share a bridge network named yourapp which is defined at the bottom of this configuration.
Here is the configuration:
version: '3.8'
services:
# PHP Service
app:
build:
args:
user: username
uid: 1000
context: ./
dockerfile: Dockerfile
image: yourapp
container_name: yourapp-app
restart: unless-stopped
working_dir: /var/www/
volumes:
- ./:/var/www
networks:
- yourapp
# MySQL Service
db:
image: mysql:8.0
container_name: yourapp-db
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
MYSQL_DATABASE: ${DB_DATABASE}
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${DB_PASSWORD}
MYSQL_USER: ${DB_USERNAME}
SERVICE_TAGS: dev
SERVICE_NAME: mysql
volumes:
- ./.docker/mysql:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d
healthcheck:
test: mysqladmin ping -h 127.0.0.1 -u ${DB_USERNAME} --password=${DB_PASSWORD}
interval: 5s
retries: 10
networks:
- yourapp
# NGINX Service
nginx:
image: nginx:alpine
container_name: yourapp-nginx
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- 8000:80
volumes:
- ./:/var/www
- ./.docker/nginx:/etc/nginx/conf.d/
networks:
- yourapp
# phpMyAdmin service
phpmyadmin:
image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin:5
ports:
- 8080:80
environment:
PMA_HOST: db
depends_on:
db:
condition: service_healthy
networks:
- yourapp
networks:
yourapp:
driver: bridge
Open your current .env file of your laravel project and just add the necessary database configuration:
DB_HOST=yourapp-db
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=your_database_name
DB_USERNAME=your_database_user_name
DB_PASSWORD=your_database_password
After you are done with configuring, run the following command to build your application image:
docker-compose build yourapp
Depending on your network speed, it might take a few minutes to build your image.
Once the build is complete, execute the following command:
docker-compose up -d
The following command will run your containers in the background. To display your information about the state of your docker services:
docker-compose ps
Install your application's dependencies:
docker-compose exec yourapp rm -rf vendor composer.lock
docker-compose exec yourapp composer install
And then run the following commands to run your Laravel application:
docker-compose exec yourapp php artisan key:generate
docker-compose exec yourapp php artisan config:clear
docker-compose exec yourapp php artisan cache:clear
docker-compose exec yourapp php artisan view:clear
docker-compose exec yourapp php artisan route:clear
docker-compose exec yourapp php artisan storage:link
Now, you can go to your browser, type your http://localhost:8000 to access your application.
If you've come to this part, give yourself a pat in the back!
From now onwards, you don't really need to install and set up a local web server and database to run and test your application.
Furthermore, you'll be having a disposable environment in your hand, which means you can easily replicate and distribute it to other developers in your team, so that no one says "It works on my machine and not on yours!"
Hope you liked this tutorial!
Recently, I started to play around with Docker and I thought of installing on my personal laptop which runs Fedora 36 workstation.
If you have Fedora and want to know how to install it, here it is:
First, add the official Docker repositories to your Fedora OS:
sudo dnf install dnf-plugins-core -y
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/fedora/docker-ce.repo
Then, you can run the following command to install Docker and it's dependencies:
sudo dnf install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
During installation, you'll be prompted to import the GPG key in order to install Docker on your system. So, press Y to proceed with the installation.
Next, enable and start the docker service:
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl start docker
That's it you are done. You can try running the following command to see if it's installed properly on your system:
sudo docker run hello-world
If it works fine, you should be seeing a "Hello from Docker!" message which means that the installation appears to be working fine.
Hope you found this tutorial useful!
If you are someone who's trying to access a AWS EC2 instance via SSH using a private key from a linux machine, you might have or will come across this error:
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Permissions 0644 for 'your-aws-private-key.pem' are too open.
It is recommended that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.
bad permissions: ignore key: your-aws-private-key.pem
Permission denied (publickey).
From what I have read, EC2 instances will simply not accept a private key that are publicly visible to others especially if it's somewhere stored in your Desktop or Downloads folder.
So basically, your private key should be accessible to others.
It's pretty straightforward, you just have to make sure that the private key is read-only like this:
chmod 400 your-aws-private-key.pem
After that, try connecting again and it should work fine!
Hope you found this tip useful!
I would consider this as an extended post to my previous post that I had written six months ago.
A PFX Certificate usually contains the following in PKCS#12 format:
To extract all those files, here are the steps that I have documented:
If the .PFX file prompts you for a passphrase, please check with your project manager or client regarding this information.
openssl pkcs12 -in <filename.pfx> -nocerts -out encrypted.key
openssl rsa -in encrypted.key -out private.key
openssl pkcs12 -in <filename.pfx> -clcerts -nokeys -out certificate.crt
openssl pkcs12 -in <filename.pfx> -cacerts -nokeys -chain | sed -ne '/-BEGIN CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p' > combined_chain_certificate.crt
Once you are done extracting all the required files, you can add the certificates like this:
SSLCertificateFile /path/to/certificate.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/private.key
# Optional, if you have it, else skip.
SSLCertificateChainFile /path/to/combined_chain_certificate.crt
Test if it works:
apachectl configtest
systemctl restart httpd
# If you don't have a combined chain certificate:
ssl_certificate /path/to/certificate.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /path/to/private.key;
# If you have a combined chain certificate:
ssl_certificate /path/to/combined_chain_certificate.crt
ssl_certificate_key /path/to/private.key;
Test if it works:
nginx -t
systemctl restart nginx
Hope you found this tip useful.
Recently, I tried to install Microsoft SQL Server driver for PHP on Amazon Linux and searching on how-to do was really annoying.
I read a few articles on StackOverflow and found some samples on GitHub Gists and thought of sharing on how I installed it.
php-devel, php-pear, php-pdo, and php-xml.These are the commands used to install the SQL Server driver:
sudo su
sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/7/prod.repo
sudo yum update
sudo ACCEPT_EULA=Y yum install -y msodbcsql mssql-tools unixODBC-devel re2c gcc-c++ gcc
sudo pecl install sqlsrv
sudo pecl install pdo_sqlsrv
You can either to go to your php.ini file and add the extension=sqlsrv extension or add it like this:
echo "extension=sqlsrv" >> `php --ini | grep "Loaded Configuration" | sed -e "s|.*:\s*||"`
echo "extension=pdo_sqlsrv" >> /etc/php.d/30-pdo_sqlsrv.ini
Ensure that the server can connect and restart the service:
sudo setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect_db 1
sudo systemctl restart httpd && sudo apachectl restart
Next, run the following the command to see that both pdo_sqlsrv and sqlsrv are installed:
php -m | grep "sqlsrv"`
Create a test.php file in your root directory and copy-paste this snippet to test if it works:
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
$serverName = "YOUR_DB_HOST";
$connectionOptions = array(
"Database" => "YOUR_DB_NAME",
"Uid" => "YOUR_DB_USER",
"PWD" => "YOUR_DB_PASSWORD"
);
$conn = sqlsrv_connect($serverName, $connectionOptions);
if($conn === false ) {
print "Connected successfully.";
} else {
print "Error while connecting to server.";
}
?>
Hope you found this tip useful!
My experiences on what made me like using Visual Studio Code.
Ever since my university days, I've always used Sublime Text for any sort of text editing and programming tasks, in general.
Despite the annoying "Subscription" dialog box, I like it because it's lightweight, simple and had nice keybindings that made it much more productive.
This week, I thought of taking Visual Studio Code for a drive, not because many developers are using it but personally, I wanted to know if it can be better than Sublime Text.
The answer is yes, it is and here's what I have experienced so far.
What I like at first is that, it's cross-platform and has support for different operating systems in various architectures. At work, I use Windows 10 and at home, I use Fedora 35 Workstation and it runs fine on both operating systems.
Intellisense is a term used by Microsoft that includes various features like: code completion, code hinting, method parameter information and more. By default, the editor supports Intellisense for JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML and CSS. But if you install different programming language extensions like Python, PHP, Golang and so on, you'll be able to configure your editor to have a much more richer experience.
At work, I write PHP code and use Laravel framework to develop web applications, I installed the following extensions to make my coding experience much more productive:
If you've never used Vim, please go ahead and try. I believe that every programmer should try using VIM instead of fearing the keybindings (like :q) as they were developed for a reason.
But unlike Vim, Sublime Text keybindings are quite fun especially when you want to duplicate a line of code, indent lines of code, matching multiple instances of the same keyword and modifying them with multiple cursors at the same time.
Try installing these extensions and see if you like them:
You can use different type of shells like Windows Powershell, Command Prompt, Git Bash and much more. Besides IMO, I found that using the integrated terminal was quite productive as I didn't have to switch windows in between.
When it comes to UI/UX, the word minimalism is often subjective but I guess Microsoft embraced the principles of minimalism for this editor.
Thanks to the open source community, there are hundreds and thousands of extensions out there. By installing various extensions, you can make it your own editor and that part fascinates me.
Besides, it's developed by Microsoft, so it definitely has a strong support and community out there.
I guess the simplicity and flexibility of this editor is what made it more powerful amongst the developer community.
Now, I'm not going to say that it's a flawless editor, just like every other pieces of software, it does have it's cons. However, I decided to try out Visual Studio Code for a while and see how it goes for me.
If it doesn't then maybe I might write a post about why I didn't like using it, in the future.
Hope you liked reading this article.
If you want to log the actual client IP address, you need to extract the X-Forward-For header from the request and in order to do that, you need to make a tiny edit in your httpd.conf file.
/etc/apache2/conf or /etc/httpd/conf and open httpd.conf file.LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined.%h to %{X-Forwarded-For}i. Now, it should look like this: LogFormat "%{X-Forwarded-For}i %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined.apachectl configtest.systemctl restart httpd or systemctl restart apache2.tail -f /var/log/httpd/access.log and you'll be seeing the client IP being logged in your logs.Hope you found this tip useful!