Overview

Installation recipe for host server

This directory contains files that enable deployment of various (Digital Humanities related) applications in Docker containers. This README.md file describes steps to set up a Linode (or other server/VM) to host those Docker containers.

Please execute these steps in the order given.

Optional

Install Webmin

Visit (http://www.webmin.com/deb.html) to assure that the commands below refer to the latest available version of Webmin. MD5 checksums are available on the Webmin downloads page.

$ cd /var/tmp
$ mkdir webmin
$ cd webmin
$ wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.740_all.deb
$ apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl apt-show-versions python
$ dpkg --install webmin_1.740_all.deb

Required

Configure Linux firewall

• Use webmin (Networking : Linux Firewall)
• Choose Allow all traffic
• Click Setup Firewall
• now go to the /etc dir and look for /etc/iptables.up.rules
• copy the original (Allow All) version of file to: iptables.up.rules.ALLOW-ALL
• update the content of the file to the content of the file config/iptables.up.rules_base in this project
• after applying the firewall and testing that desired traffic is permitted (minimally, SSH via port 22 and Webmin via port 10000), set the firewall to Activate at boot
• for reference, see the screenshot below:

Install Apache httpd

Install

• Go to Unused Modules on the Webmin menu
• Select the Apache Webserver
• Click the click here link to install from Webmin
• (Alternatively from the command line: apt-get install apache2)

Configure

• Enable the proxy and proxy-http modules. This will come into play when creating virtual hosts. (Using Webmin, go to Global configuration then Configure Apache Modules.)

Install Docker

These instructions (for installing then testing the Docker installation) are cribbed from docs.docker.com. They assume that wget is already installed.

$ wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh
$ docker run hello-world

Install Git (if not already installed)

$ apt-get install git

Each Docker-encapsulated app requires a VirtualServer in httpd

As the heading says: each Docker-encapsulated application requires a VirtualServer in httpd. That VirtualServer intercepts a visitor's request to the application -- at, for example, the url http://myproject.digitalhumanities.berkeley.edu -- and redirects that request to the port used by the myproject Docker container for receiving requests.

The example below assumes that a Docker container is listening on the host machine's port 43000.

Webmin or the command line can be used to create a virtual server. Webmin is recommended (documentation here, tho you might prefer to click your way around, it's probably easier than reading the doc) -- unless the host admin is familiar with how virtual servers are laid out on the host OS's filesystem (e.g., Ubuntu setup is different from RHEL), and prefers to go the manual route.

 <VirtualHost *:80>
   ProxyPreserveHost On

   ProxyPass / http://0.0.0.0:43000/
   ProxyPassReverse / http://0.0.0.0:43000/

   ServerName myproject.digitalhumanities.berkeley.edu
 </VirtualHost>