MSC Geospatial Development Environment

This repository is used to manage the Vagrantfile used to create a quick development environment for students and MSC Geospatial and Open Data Systems (GODS) team members. We use Vagrant and VirtualBox to create a virtual machine (VM) that closely resembles the existing architecture used to deploy many of our applications.

The VM created will contain the following software:

• Latest GDAL version available on unbuntugis-unstable
• Latest MapServer version available on unbuntugis-unstable
• Latest GDAL Python bindings available via PyPI
• Latest Elasticsearch 7.x version from Elasticsearch APT repository

Installation Guide

Download Vagrant and VirtualBox

In order to setup the VM, you will need to download the following software for the operating system of your choice:

• Vagrant
• VirtualBox

Mac OS X

• compatible versions of Vagrant are required. Below are working combinations:
  • Vagrant 2.2.7 and VirtualBox 6.1

Setup

The following steps will get you started with your development environment.

Get Vagrantfile

Either clone this directory or download the Vagrantfile to your computer. Place the Vagrantfile inside a local directory of your choosing (i.e. ~/devel/gods-dev-vm/).

Booting up the VM

Prior to booting the VM, you may want to edit the Vagrantfile in your favourite text editor to modify the initial amount of CPUs and memory (RAM) used by your machine. To change these values, open the file and look for:

config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |v|
	v.memory = 2048
	v.cpus = 2

Modify the existing values to suit your needs based off of your existing hardware.

IMPORTANT: In many cases, 1024 MB of memory is insufficient for Elasticsearch to run properly in the VM. Please consider providing at minimum 2048 MB of memory to your VM.

Linux / Mac OS X

Open up a Terminal and cd into the local directory you chose above. Run vagrant up. This will start up the VM for the first time and run through the provisioning process.

Windows

You may need to enable VT-x in your computer's BIOS. If it is not enabled, VirtualBox will raise an error during the next step.

Using the Command Prompt navigate to the local directory you chose above. Run vagrant up. This will start up the VM for the first time and run through the provisioning process.

Usage

Accessing MapServer and Elasticsearch via your host computer

Following the initial boot of your VM, both MapServer and Elasticsearch will be available via your browser on your host computer:

• Elasticsearch: http://localhost:9201
• Mapserver: http://localhost:8888/cgi-bin/mapserv?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetCapabilities

Accessing your VM via SSH

Linux / Mac OS X

To access your VM via your host computer, open a terminal window and navigate to the directory that contains your Vagrantfile and run vagrant ssh.

Windows

With Command Prompt open and in the directory containing your Vagrantfile run vagrant ssh.

It is also possible to access your VM with MobaXTerm. To do so, open Command Prompt and navigate to your local directory containing the Vagrantfile and run:

vagrant ssh-config > vagrant-ssh

Open MobaXTerm and start a local session, cd to the local directory containing the Vagrantfile and run:

ssh -F vagrant-ssh default

You should now be connected to your VM via SSH.

Using the shared folder

Using the shared folder allows you to easily access files between your local computer and the VM. When running vagrant up for the first time, a shared folder is also created in the same directory as the Vagrantfile which is made available on the VM at /home/vagrant/shared.

It is a good idea to clone any repositories in this directory as it will allow you to access them from your favourite IDE on your local computer.

Basic Vagrant commands

# turn on VM
vagrant up

# pause VM
vagrant suspend

# turn off VM
vagrant halt

# destroy VM
vagrant destroy

# rerun the initial provisioning careful!
vagrant provision

For more information on using the Vagrant CLI, please read the Vagrant CLI documentation