Saint's Log

Setting up an Amazon AMI

Start with the CS462 AMI.

Edit multiverse.list

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/multiverse.list

Add the following lines to multiverse.list:

deb http://us.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic multiverse
deb-src http://us.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main

Then run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get install php5 php5-cli php-pear php5-gd php5-curl
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-python
sudo apt-get install ec2-ami-tools
sudo apt-get install ec2-api-tools
sudo apt-get install python-cheetah
sudo apt-get install python-dev
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
sudo apt-get install python-simplejson
sudo apt-get install python-pycurl
sudo apt-get install python-imaging
sudo apt-get install subversion
sudo apt-get install git-core

Note: the sun-java6-bin and libphp-cloudfusion packages are not strictly necessary (OpenJDK will be installed instead of the former, and the AWS PHP SDK instructions are given below instead of the latter). unzip could come in handy as well. The python packages are installed to allow for python web development without having to install the appropriate packages after starting the server.

git config --global user.name "Johny Boy"
git config --global user.email johnyboy@gmail.com
sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Next, install Smarty as per the Smarty documentation (lines 1-3) and the Zend Framework as well (lines 4-7) since it may come in handy.

cd /usr/local/lib
sudo wget http://www.smarty.net/files/Smarty-3.0.7.tar.gz
sudo tar vxzf Smarty-3.0.7.tar.gz
cd /opt
sudo wget http://framework.zend.com/releases/ZendFramework-1.11.4/ZendFramework-1.11.4-minimal.tar.gz
sudo tar vxzf ZendFramework-1.11.4-minimal.tar.gz
sudo mv ZendFramework-1.11.4-minimal ZendFramework-1.11.4

Install System_Daemon as well to enable running PHP Daemons. There’s also a sample daemon illustrating how to use this class.

sudo pear install -f System_Daemon

Clone the AWS PHP SDK into /usr/share/php as documented in the “Getting Started with the AWS SDK for PHP” tutorial (lines 1-3) and then configure the SDK security credentials (lines 4-6).

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/php
cd /usr/share/php
sudo git clone git://github.com/amazonwebservices/aws-sdk-for-php.git awsphpsdk
mkdir -p ~/.aws/sdk
cp /usr/share/php/awsphpsdk/config-sample.inc.php ~/.aws/sdk/config.inc.php
vi ~/.aws/sdk/config.inc.php

Now we can prepare to create the image and then run the ec2 commands to create, upload, and register the image. See the AMI tools reference for information about these commands. Of course the actual access key, secret key, bucket names, etc need to be substituted with the correct values.

cd /mnt
sudo mkdir image
sudo mv /home/ubuntu/PrivateKey.pem .
sudo mv /home/ubuntu/X509Cert.pem .
sudo ec2-bundle-vol -k PrivateKey.pem -c X509Cert.pem -u 999988887777 -d /mnt/image
sudo ec2-upload-bundle -b cs462-machines/mybucket -m /mnt/image/image.manifest.xml -a AKIADQKE4SARGYLE -s eW91dHViZS5jb20vd2F0Y2g/dj1SU3NKMTlzeTNKSQ==
ec2-register cs462-machines/mybucket/image.manifest.xml --K PrivateKey.pem -C X509Cert.pem

Once the process is complete, the instance can be launched with the following user data:

#! /bin/bash
sudo git clone git://github.com/pathtorepo/cs462.git /home/ubuntu/www > /home/ubuntu/gitclone.log
sudo chown -R ubuntu /home/ubuntu/www/
sudo chown nobody:nogroup /home/ubuntu/www/smarty/templates_c/
sudo chown nobody:nogroup /home/ubuntu/www/smarty/cache/
sudo chmod 770 /home/ubuntu/www/smarty/templates_c/
sudo chmod 770 /home/ubuntu/www/smarty/cache/

Note that the owner of the checked out www folder is set to ubuntu to ensure files can be edited conveniently without sudo. The “nobody” user is then made the owner of the smarty folders and they are assigned to the “nogroup” group. The permissions are then set to 770 for maximum security. I actually ended up using 777 to speed up development on my server – see the apache error log if nothing is displayed from the templates (most likely a case of permission errors).

Here’s are some options to include in the apache configuration file:

        DocumentRoot /home/ubuntu/www/htdocs
        <Directory /home/ubuntu/www/htdocs/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all

                DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.py

                AddHandler mod_python .py
                AddHandler php5-script .php
                PythonHandler mod_python.publisher
                PythonDebug On
        </Directory>

I ended up pushing my server configuration as well to a public git server containing my entire application. Server configuration is then reduced to:

sudo cp /home/ubuntu/www/serverconfig/apache/appserver/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
sudo apache2ctl restart