Fast Symfony2 served on a stable Xubuntu

Ingredients:

• VirtualBox 4.1.12
• Xubuntu 12.04 LTS
• Symfony 2.0.12

Introduction:

This recipe is for people who want to install symfony2 quickly with all dependencies, without having to read the excellent documentation that can be found here:

1. The quick tour
2. The book
3. The cookbook

This recipe can be used by linux users or by windows users that run linux in a virtual machine.

This will get you:

• A working Symfony2 installation
• Pretty URL’s (using mod_rewrite)
• Optimized execution speed (using php5-apc)
• Configured timezone settings and internationalization support (using php5-intl)
• Run as a specific user and not as www-data (using apache2-mpm-itk)
• Created a database and installed a database management tool (phpmyadmin).

The instructions are meant for a development platform. If you use these instructions on a production platform the least you should do is choose a more secure password. NB: You also might want to run Ubuntu Server instead of Xubuntu in such a case.

This will NOT get you:

• A debugging environment (using XDebug)
• An PHP IDE with debugging integration (Eclipse PDT)

For serious web development you might want the above: a full-featured IDE and a step-by-step debugger. This will be discussed in another post.

Instructions:

The lines below with a “-” are actions and the lines with a “$” are commands:

- Download and install Virtualbox
- Download xubuntu iso
- Configure a new Virtual Machine with:
  OS set to: Linux/Ubuntu 64
  4 cores (assuming you have 8 cores)
  2048 MB RAM (assuming you have at least 4096)
  20 GB VDI dynamic disk
- Select the Xubuntu iso file in the first run wizard
- Install Xubuntu by following the steps
- Install additional drivers (guest additions) and reboot
- Open up a web browser
- Go to http://symfony.com/download and click download
- Save "Symfony_Standard_Vendors_2.x.xx.tgz" and unpack it
- Move the "Symfony" folder to your home directory and rename it to "public_html"
$ sudo apt-get install lamp-server^ php-apc apache2-mpm-itk php5-intl php5-sqlite phpmyadmin
  choose a mysql root password
  choose to configure phpmyadmin for apache2
$ sudo a2enmod rewrite
$ sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
  NB: use Ctrl-W Ctrl-R to search and replace
  search: ;date.timezone =
  replace: date.timezone = Europe/Amsterdam
  NB: enter your local timezone if you are not in Europe/Amsterdam
      (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones)
  search: short_open_tag = On
  replace: short_open_tag = Off
$ pwd
  NB: note down the output, as this is the path of your home folder (in my case: /home/maurits)
$ id -un
  NB: note down the output, as this is your user name (in my case: maurits)
$ id -gn
  NB: note down the output, as this is your group name (in my case: maurits)
$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
  NB: use Ctrl-W Ctrl-R to search and replace
  search: /var/www
  replace: {YOUR_HOME_FOLDER}/public_html/web
  NB: you have to enter the home folder path you found from the pwd command instead of {YOUR_HOME_FOLDER}
$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
  NB: add the following line under the DocumentRoot
  AssignUserId {YOUR_USER_NAME} {YOUR_GROUP_NAME}
  NB: you have to enter your user name and group name instead of {YOUR_USER_NAME} {YOUR_GROUP_NAME}
$ sudo service apache2 restart
- Open web browser and go to http://127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin
- Login with root user and chosen root password
- Click "Privileges"
- Click "Add a new User"
- Enter/choose:
  username: symfony
  host: localhost
  password: symfony
  retype: symfony
- Select "Create database with same name and grant all privileges"
- Click "Create User"
- Open a web browser and go to http://127.0.0.1/config.php
- verify that symfony does not complain about anything
- click "Configure your Symfony Application online"
- Enter/choose:
  Driver: MySQL (PDO)
  Host: localhost
  Name: symfony
  User: symfony
  Password: symfony
  Password again: symfony
- Let symfony generate a "Global Secret"
- Choose "Next Step"
- Symfony should say: Your distribution is configured!
- Click "Go to the Welcome page"
- Click "Run the Demo"
- Play around with the demo to see that everything works

Bonus instructions:

Some nice tips on how to customize your Xubuntu:

• You can make your Xubuntu panels look like Gnome2
  http://namakutux.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-make-xfce-looks-like-gnome-2.html
• You can replace abiword/gnumeric with the much better libre office:
  sudo apt-get remove abiword gnumeric && sudo apt-get install libreoffice
• You can replace leafpad with the full-featured gedit:
  sudo apt-get remove leafpad && sudo apt-get install gedit

That is it for today, have fun!