Synology as Web gateway (part1)

RedMine is a great tool for developpers: unfortunately it does not perform well on my synology DS-107+ (for various reasons i don't have time to inspect, low memory is probably a first answer)...

Anyway, as i'm having a-lot-of (probably too-much) machines available @ home: i choose to dedicate some horsepower to run a minimalistic virtual linux machine with Apache and RedMine (note that Bitnami is offering such packages ready for download).

So my idea was to use the Synology as a gateway between the internet and my home LAN, mainly to centralize security settings, and access point uniqueness.

Many topics are covered in this recipe:

1) Installing a virtual ubuntu server running redmine
2) Running a virtual machine as a service under Windows 7

3) Binding the Synology web frontend and a virtual server

Creating the virtual machine : ubuntu+redmine

Get VirtualBox, http://www.virtualbox.org/ . Eventually look for a portable edition.

Create a new virtual machine: Ubuntu type, i dedicated 20gb of expandable disk space and 512Mo memory (but 5Go and 256Mo should be fine). Use Bridged Network Access for network connections (it should allow the virtual machine to have its own static IP address on your LAN).

Note: to move a virtual server from one machine to another: ensure that you're using the same netword card between virtualbox installations: type of network card and MAC address must be the same. (note that if network is not working properly on virtualized linux, ensure that /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules doesn't contain deprecated MAC entries).

Grab Ubuntu server ISO, attach it to your virtua machine and perform the (blazingly fast) install: select Apache and MySQL components

• Once connected to the console, you might notice a sluggish refresh:

howto blackList vga mode :
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.conf
add the following line:
blacklist vga16fb

Note: you can enable and use remote access to a virtualbox machine...

Enforcing static IP use for the virtual Ubuntu Server (192.168.0.78 in my case)

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

change

auto eth0

iface eth0 inet dhcp

into

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.78
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.254

store your dns info via

sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf

you should read/add something like this

nameserver 208.67.220.220
nameserver 208.67.222.222

 and finally

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Install VirtualBox extensions on ubuntu servers

apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

cd /media/cdrom

./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

Perform Ubuntu system update:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ruby

sudo apt-get install rubygems

Install Ruby requirements for RedMine

sudo gem install
gem install rails -v 2.3.5 -no-doc -no-ri

gem install rack -v 1.0.1 -no-doc -no-ri

Plug Ruby with MySQL, using an adapter:

cd /tmp

check latest version http://github.com/tmtm/ruby-mysql/downloads

wget http://github.com/downloads/tmtm/ruby-mysql/ruby-mysql-2.9.3-beta.tar.gz
tar -xzvf ruby-mysql-2.9.3-beta.tar.gz
cd ruby-mysql-2.9.3-beta/
ruby setup.rb

Eventually install PHPMyAdmin

sudo wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmyadmin/files%2FphpMyAdmin%2F3.3.7%2FphpMyAdmin-3.3.7-all-languages.tar.gz

sudo tar -xzvf 

sudo mv /apps/phpMyAdmin

On Ubuntu Server: symbolic links in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled point to 'available' web sites. Use the a2ensite (Apache2 Enable Site) command to create such symbolic links, like this: sudo a2ensite mynewsite where your site configuration file is /etc/apache2/sites-available/mynewsite . Similarly, the a2dissite utility is used to disable sites.

Enabling your PhpMyAdmin directory as a site

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
ln /phpmyadmin /apps/phpmyadmin-3.3.7
sudo a2ensite phpmyadmin
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

browse to address/phpmyadmin

login/root from installation credentials

sometimes php fails when triggered (security problems), edit

sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

and edit open_basedir = to add your own '/apps/' (which allow php execution from that directory).

Install Mercurial

sudo apt-get install mercurial

Download and configure Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/wiki/redmine/RedmineInstall)

chown -R www-data:www-data /apps/
cd /volume1/apps
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/72201/redmine-1.0.1.tar.gz
tar -xzvf redmine-1.0.1.tar.gz

mv redmine-1.0.1 redmine
cd redmine/config
cp database.yml.sample database.yml
nano /config/database.yml

production
adapter: mysql

username: redmine
password: xxxxxxxx

sudo apt-get install libopenssl-ruby1.8
sudo apt-get install rake

cd redmine

RAILS_ENV=production rake config/initializers/session_store.rb
RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate

RAILS_ENV=production rake redmine:load_default_data
ruby script/server -p production

in redmine login/password: admin admin

Install passenger (module enabling execution of ruby servicing in Apache)

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-passenger

load module in sites apache config scripts if not included by default

LoadModule passenger_module modules/mod_passenger.so

Install RedMine site under Apache (http://www.he1ix.org/?p=572)

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
Alias /redmine /apps/redmine-1.0.1/public
sudo a2ensite redmine
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
sudo chown -R www-data.www-data files log tmp public/plugin_assets
sudo a2enmod rewrite
cd /apps/redmine-1.0.1/public
copy dispatch.cgi.example dispatch.cgi

If you have problem with /tmp/mysql.sock (Redmine having some problems to access mysql: can't find /tmp/mysql.sock):

you cant use sudo  ln -s /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock /tmp/mysql.sock (file is not persistent), but you may specify the ubuntu mysql socket path in redmine config: edit /redmine/config/database.yml

production:
  adapter: mysql
  socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

Enabling NFS services on your synology: to allow your LAN machine to access a repository on the synology

synoservice --list
synoservice --enable nfs
nano /etc/exports

In 'exports' file, add the following line
/directory/ ip.of.NFS.client(ro,root_squash,no_subtree_check)
(* as 'ip.of.NFS.client', means 'for all computers on LAN')

Save the 'exports' file

Check if the file /var/lib/nfs/rmtab does exist, if not, run the following command
touch /var/lib/nfs/rmtab

Now perform
cd / /usr/sbin/exportfs -a

Testing: look at /var/log/messages to check whether the settings are ok with your Synology product

On the Ubuntu Server side (read this):

sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server
sudo mkdir /apps/mnt
sudo mount 192.168.0.77:/volume1/repos

sudo vi /etc/fstab

to add

192.168.0.77:/volume1/repos /nfsmount nfs

That's it for the virtual ubuntu server install !