Installing an emergence host with Docker

chris · November 28, 2018, 5:08am

Emergence’s multi-site runtime environment is available as a Docker image: jarvus/emergence

Going forward, this will be the recommended way to run an emergence host system. The /emergence tree within the container should be preserved via a volume or bind mount if you want to persist the sites set up within the container.

This guide will walk you through the complete process from a fresh machine, optionally migrating sites and data from an existing machine along the way.

Setup guide

Provision Ubuntu 18.04 machine

Install current Docker version

Install Docker directly from Docker’s official repository, bypassing the out-of-date versions distributed by Ubuntu’s default sources:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic stable"
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y docker-ce

(Optional) Migrate data from an existing host
- To migrate data from an existing host, launch a temporary container from the jarvus/emergence image that just gives you a bash shell instead of running the kernel so you can set up the /emergence volume first, bind-mounting your current user’s ~/.ssh directory to gain ssh access to the existing host. This approach ensures that file ownership within the volume aligns with the correct users/groups defined in the container.
```
docker run \
    --rm \
    -it \
    -v /emergence:/emergence \
    -v ~/.ssh:/root/.ssh \
    jarvus/emergence \
    bash
```
  Then, from inside this shell:
  1. Ensure you can connect to the existing machine’s root user using ssh:
```
ssh root@emergence.example.org
# accept the new host key and then exit the shell after it works
```
  2. Use rsync to clone the existing /emergence tree from another machine to the new container volume, excluding run state, logs, and backups:
```
rsync \
    --archive \
    --verbose \
    --progress \
    --exclude 'sql-backups' \
    --exclude '*.log' \
    --exclude '*.pid' \
    --exclude '*.sock' \
    root@emergence.example.org:/emergence/ /emergence/
```
    For a clean migration, this should ideally be done while host services on the source machine are shut down. Cloning a running server for test purposes should be fine, but be aware of any additional load placed placed on the source server during the clone.
  3. Repair cloned table data offline with myisamchk:
```
find /emergence/services/data/mysql/ -iname '*.MYI' -exec bash -c 'file="{}"; myisamchk -r "${file::-4}"' \;
```
  4. Back up the copied emergence-kernel config:
```
cp -a /emergence/config.json /emergence/config.json.bak
```
  5. Update host-specific configuration properties to match what is appropriate for the container runtime:
```
cat /emergence/config.json.bak | underscore process '
  data.user = "www-data";
  data.group = "www-data";
  data.server.host = "0.0.0.0";
  data.services.plugins.web.execPath = "/usr/sbin/nginx";
  data.services.plugins.web.bindHost = "0.0.0.0";
  data.services.plugins.sql.execPath = "/usr/sbin/mysqld";
  data.services.plugins.sql.bindHost = "0.0.0.0";
  data.services.plugins.php.execPath = "/usr/sbin/php-fpm5.6";
  data;
' > /emergence/config.json
```
  6. If you need to add or change administrative users from what was cloned from the existing host, install the htpasswd command from NPM and use it now to make changes to /emergence/admins.htpasswd:
```
npm install -g htpasswd

# add user myuser:
htpasswd -s /emergence/admins.htpasswd myuser
```
  7. Exit the shell to shut down and remove the temporary container:
```
exit
```
Create emergence multi-site host container

Run the container with all ports exposed and the /emergence tree bind-mounted to the same path on your Docker host machine:
```
docker run -d \
    --name emergence \
    -v /emergence:/emergence \
    -p 80:80 \
    -p 3306:3306 \
    -p 9083:9083 \
    jarvus/emergence
```
The administrative web UI should now be accessible at http://127.0.0.1:9083 via any user defined in /emergence/admins.htpasswd. Verify that you can login and that all services show as online.

(Optional) Upgrade cloned MySQL data

If you cloned an existing machine earlier in this guide, you should now use the mysql_upgrade script to ensure the cloned MySQL data is in sync with the container’s possibly newer MySQL version:

docker exec -it emergence bash -c '
    mysql_upgrade \
        -u root \
        -p$(cat /emergence/config.json | underscore extract --outfmt text services.plugins.sql.managerPassword) \
        -S /emergence/services/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
'

Useful commands

Open a MySQL shell

docker exec -it emergence emergence-mysql-shell

This is a wrapper for the normal mysql command-line client that handles the connection details for you, so you can use all its normal capabilities:

echo "SELECT * FROM people;" | docker exec -i emergence emergence-mysql-shell mydatabase