Setting up a local test/development server with vmware

mrwilson · Unread post by **mrwilson** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 4:59 pm

I need to set up a Centos 5 test/development server so that I can test and get my web applications to work with the ASL kernel and software updates.

Scotts idea is great, to do this with vmware, which I could do locally at home without paying for another dedicated server. Also I could make snapshots of the vmware image before any software updates to easily revert back if something turns out to break my web applications.

Scotts idea was to download a pre-installed vmware image (appliance) with Centos 5, to save some time I suppose, install Plesk and migrate my domains to the development server, but I would still have to make sure I have the same packages and versions installed as on the production server to have the same starting conditions for testing, right?

Now I am trying to figure out some last things before doing this:

1) How could I install Centos on my local vmware image and make sure I end up with exactly the same packages and versions of everything that is currently on my production centos server in the datacenter?
Should I ask the datacenter if they used a kickstart script or something?

2) Does anyone know a download location for a Centos 5 vmware image, because from the vmware site, in their list of appliances, the download link isn't working and the torrent isn't seeded or at least so poorly that it would still take 2 months to complete it.
I could use a Centos DVD to install, but I have some doubts I would end up with anything close to how it is installed on my dedicated server.

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 5:23 pm

Getting the same versions of everything is easy: make sure everything is updated to the latest available version.

And you could just compare lists of installed packages (rpm -qa | sort > sorted-package-list.txt).

I'd just grab the CentOS iso, do a minimal OS install, install Plesk and upgrade everything. Unless you have custom packages/settings on your production box that should get you started.

mrwilson · Unread post by **mrwilson** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:08 pm

breun, thank you,
yes ideally I would update everything to the latest version.
Just that on the live production server I can not just update everything to the latest version right now, because it will break running e-commerce sites. That's the reason why I need to set up the dev server in the first place.

Thanks for the command, rpm -qa | sort > sorted-package-list.txt
It would still mean there is no way around of manually comparing each package and removing / installing them and possibly trying to find older versions for the dev server if I already ended up with newer ones, right?

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 8:21 pm

Right. What packages are you running older versions of for those sites?

mrwilson · Unread post by **mrwilson** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:08 pm

Things I need to test on the dev server are

PHP, newer version would break a helpdesk application

ASL Kernel, I need to test, because it stops libcurl from working so I can't run it now on the production server

Unread post by **scott** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 7:51 am

Just a note here, ASL doesnt stop libcurl from working, since that is just a library natively linked into PHP. It stops an app that loads an older version of libcurl from being loaded into PHP via the dl() function. The bigger issue to stay on top of is that the dl() function itself was deprecated as of 5.0. I believe its completely gone in 5.2

mrwilson · Unread post by **mrwilson** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 8:24 am

scott wrote:Just a note here, ASL doesnt stop libcurl from working, since that is just a library natively linked into PHP. It stops an app that loads an older version of libcurl from being loaded into PHP via the dl() function. The bigger issue to stay on top of is that the dl() function itself was deprecated as of 5.0. I believe its completely gone in 5.2

Sorry Scott, didn't mean to put it the wrong way, I have trouble understanding properly myself what is happening.

I like ASL, and I have ASL installed and libcurl works, it just stops working if I also want to use the ASL kernel, so at the moment I am using ASL but with the CentOS kernel.

Once I have the development machine set up with your kernel then we have to figure out how to make the libcurl work, so I can use the kernel also on the production server.

Still don't have the vmware set up though.