Boot2docker Vagrant Box

Boot2docker Vagrant box for optimized Docker and Docker Compose use on Mac and Windows.

What is this?

This is a temporary solution to achieve better performance with synced folders and docker data volumes on Mac and Windows.
The stock boot2docker currently mounts host volumes via the default VirtualBox Guest Additions (vboxfs) mode, which is terribly slow. Much better performance can be achieved with NFS, SMB or rsync.

Prerequisites

1. VirtualBox 4.3.20+
2. Vagrant 1.6.3+
3. Git

Proceed to Setup and usage if you already have all prerequisites installed or prefer to install some/all manually.
Automatic installation of prerequisites is available via the following one-liners.

Mac

On Mac prerequisites are installed using brew/cask (brew and cask will be installed if missing).

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/blinkreaction/boot2docker-vagrant/master/presetup-mac.sh)

Windows

On Windows prerequisites are installed using chocolatey (chocolatey will be installed if missing).

1. Run Command Prompt as administrator
2. Copy and and paste there the code from presetup-win.cmd

Setup and usage

Automatic installation (Mac and Windows)

On Windows Git Bash is the recommended option to run console commands. If you are having any issues, please check if they can be reproduced in Git Bash.

Run the following command within your <Projects> (shared boo2docker VM for multiple projects, recommended) or <Project> (dedicated boot2docker VM) directory:

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/blinkreaction/boot2docker-vagrant/master/setup.sh)

Manual installation (Mac and Windows)

1. Copy Vagrantfile and vagrant.yml files from this repo into your <Projects> (shared boo2docker VM for multiple projects, recommended) or <Project> (dedicated boot2docker VM) directory.

2. Rename vagrant.yml.dist to vagrant.yml

3. Launch Terminal (Mac) or Git Bash (Windows)

4. cd to </path/to/project>, start the VM

   cd </path/to/project>
   vagrant up
   

5. Verify installation

   docker version
   vagrant ssh -c 'docker-compose --version'
   

Synced Folders options

This box supports all Synced Folder options provided by Vagrant:

• vboxfs - native VirtualBox method, cross-platform, convenient and reliable, terribly slow
• NFS - better performance and convenience for Mac
• SMB - better performance and convenience for Windows (on par with NFS on Mac)
• rsync - best performance, cross-platform, one-way only

Follow the instructions in the vagrant.yml file to switch between different sync options. The best balance between performance and convenience can be achieved with NFS on Mac (default) and SMB on Windows (not default).

Additional steps are required to get SMB or rsync to work on Windows. See below.

In addition to the stock SMB synced folders option this box provides an experimental one: SMB2.
With the SMB2 option you will receive several "elevated command prompt" prompts which you accept.
No need to enter usernames and passwords unlike the stock SMB option Vagrant ships with.

If you use rsync, you'll have to run vagrant rsync-auto in a separate terminal to keep the files in sync as you make changes.

Mac

Option comparison for Mac Drupal developers (using time drush si -y as a test case):

• vboxfs: 6x (slowest)
• NFS: 1.3x
• rsync: 1x (fastest)

NFS provides good performance and convenience. It is the default and recommended option on Mac.

Windows

Option comparison for Windows Drupal developers (using time drush si -y as a test case):

• vboxfs: 5x (slowest)
• SMB: 2x
• rsync: 1x (fastest)

SMB provides good performance and convenience. It is the recommended option, but NOT the default one on Windows.

Enabling SMB

To use the SMB synced folder type:

1. Stop the VM with: vagrant halt
2. Choose smb as the sync type in the vagrant.yml file.
3. Launch Git Bash as an administrator
4. Start the VM: vagrant up

While using SMB you have to control Vagrant from an elevated (run as admin) Git Bash shell.

SMB2 (experimental option)

This is an experimental option.
Compared to SMB, SMB2 does not require running vagrant as admin and does not prompt for username and password.
You will receive several "elevated command prompt" prompts which you accept. Vagrant will automatically create a user, set correct file permissions, create the SMB share, and mount it.

Enabling rsync

rsync is not natively available on Windows.
Git for Windows comes with Git Bash shell, which is based on MinGW/MSYS.
MSYS has a package for rsync, which can be installed and accessed via Git Bash.

To use rsync on Windows:

1. Download and extract the content on this archive into the bin directory of your Git installation (e.g. c:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\).
2. Choose rsync as the sync type in the vagrant.yml file.
3. Provide an explicit list of folders to sync in the vagrant.yml file (folders sequence).
4. Reload the VM: vagrant reload
5. Run vagrant rsync-auto to keep the files in sync as you make changes.

VirtualBox VM settings

Open vagrant.yml file and edit respective values.

• v.gui - Set to true for debugging. This will unhide VM's primary console screen. Default: false.
• v.memory - Memory settings (MB). Default: 2048.
• v.cpus: 1 - number of virtual CPU cores. Default: 1.

Please note, VirtualBox works much better with a single CPU in most cases, this it is not recommended to change the v.cpus value.

Network settings

The default box private network IP is 192.168.10.10. To map additional IP addresses for use with multiple projects open vagrant.yml and ucomment respective lines:

hosts:
    - ip: 192.168.10.11
    - ip: 192.168.10.12
    - ip: 192.168.10.13

Project specific <IP>:<port> mapping for containers is done in via docker-compose in docker-compose.yml

vhost-proxy

As an alternative to using dedicated IPs for different projects a built-in vhost-proxy container can be used.
It binds to 192.168.10.10:80 (the default box IP address) and routes web requests based on the Host header.

How to use

• Set vhost_proxy: true in your vagrant.yml file and do a 'vagrant reload'
• Set the VIRTUAL_HOST environment variable for the web container in your setup (e.g. VIRTUAL_HOST=example.com)
• Add an entry in your hosts file (e.g. /etc/hosts) to point the domain to the default box IP (192.168.10.10)
  • As an alternative see Wildcard DNS instructions below

Example docker run

docker run --name nginx -d -e "VIRTUAL_HOST=example.com" nginx:latest

Example docker-compose.yml entry

# Web node
web:
  image: nginx:latest
  ports:
    - "80"
  environment:
    - VIRTUAL_HOST=example.com

Example hosts file entry

192.168.10.10  example.com

It is completely fine to use both the vhost-proxy approach and the dedicated IPs approach concurently:

• "80" - expose port "80", docker will randomly pick an available port on the Docker Host
• "192.168.10.11:80:80" - dedicated IP:port mapping

Wildcard DNS (on Mac)

Enabling the vhost-proxy in vagrant.yml (vhost_proxy: true) will also enable a lightweight dnsmasq container.
This container binds to 192.168.10.10:53 and will resolve all *.drude DNS requests to 192.168.10.10 (VM's primary IP address), where vhost-proxy listens on port 80.

Wildcard DNS - Mac configuration

sudo mkdir -p /etc/resolver
echo -e "\n# .drude domain resolution\nnameserver 192.168.10.10" | sudo tee -a  /etc/resolver/drude

Check configuration

scutil --dns
dig myproject.drude

Tips

Automate DOCKER_HOST variable export

This is only necessary for manual instllations. On Mac the setup.sh scripts takes care of this for you.

Add the following in your .bashrc, .zshrc, etc. file to automate the environment variable export:

# Docker (default for Vagrant based boxes)
export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:2375

If you also have $(boot2docker shellinit) there, then make sure those lines go BEFORE it, e.g.:

# Docker (default for Vagrant based boxes)
export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:2375

# boot2docker shellinit
$(boot2docker shellinit)

This way if boot2docker is NOT running, your DOCKER_HOST will default to tcp://localhost:2375. Otherwise $(boot2docker shellinit) will overwrite the variables and set DOCKER_HOST to point to the boot2docker VM.

Vagrant control

Vagrant can be controlled (e.g. vagrant up, vagrant ssh, vagrant reload, etc.) from the root directory of the Vagrantfile as well as from any subdirectory. This is very usefull when working with multiple projects in subdirectories.

Sublime Text 3 users

Add this to your user settings (Sublime Text > Preferences > Settings - User):

{
    "atomic_save": false
}

ST3 does not update the ctime extended file attribute when saving a file. This leads to NFS not seeing the changes in a file unless the file size changes as well (i.e. changing a single symbol in a file with ST3 will not be visible over NFS). The setting above fixes that.