Introduction

In this article, we will see how to setup a WordPress website using Docker. Containerization has changed the face of how the applications are packaged and deployed. WordPress hosting using docker containers makes it easy to host and manage the hosting.

For setting up the website, a WordPress container and a SQL database container are required. As we are using the containers, configurations can be fed into the containers during the creation by defining them in the Docker compose file.

Prerequisites

A host with docker engine and docker-compose installed.

Here we are using Ubuntu 20.04 as the host. Docker and Docker-compose packages are installed using the below code.

Docker engine installation

The latest stable version of the docker can be installed by executing just 2 lines of code in your Linux shell. Detailed documentation is available at https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh

Add the current user (user ubuntu in my case) to the docker group

sudo usermod -aG docker ubuntu

Close the session and re-login for the user to update the permission

Docker-Compose installation

sudo apt install docker-compose -y

Docker network configuration

Two networks are defined for separating the web traffic and database connection.

sudo docker network create --subnet 10.10.10.0/24 data_default
sudo docker network create --subnet 10.10.11.0/24 proxy_default

WordPress and MariaDB Installation

As Docker loses its knowledge of data on reboot, the WordPress and the DB data has to be stored in a persistent storage (i.e. in a storage).

Following are the configuration details:

WordPress:

• Container name – testweb_wp
• local data folder ‘/opt/data/wp_testweb/html’ mapped to the wordpress container instance at ‘/var/www/html’
• container port 80 is mapped to host port 8089
• The container runs with the user account ubuntu with pid 1001(check your account puid and pgid and provide the number accordingly)
• WordPress container connects to 2 bridge networks proxy_nw >> proxy_default and hosts_nw >. data_default
• and the configurations to connect to the database

MariaDB:

• Container name – testweb_db_host
• There is no port mapping to the host machine as the it communicates internally to the wordpress container
• local data folder ‘/opt/data/wp_test/db’ mapped to database container instance at ‘/config’

Create necessary folders

sudo mkdir /opt/data/ /opt/data/wp_testweb/ /opt/data/wp_testweb/html/ /opt/data/wp_testweb/db/

WordPress Docker Compose YAML

Create yaml file

cd /opt/data/wp_testweb/
sudo touch docker-compose.yaml

Use any text editor and add the following yaml code to the docker-compose file

version: '2'
services:
  testweb_db_host:
    image: linuxserver/mariadb:latest
    networks:
      - hosts_nw
    volumes:
      - /opt/data/wp_testweb/db:/config
    environment:
      - PUID=1001
      - PGID=1001
      - MYSQL_USER=wp_user
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=testweb_db
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=Sup35ComplexPass
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=^3ryComplexPass
    restart: unless-stopped
  testweb_wp:
    image: wordpress:latest
    networks:
      - proxy_nw
      - hosts_nw
    ports:
      - 8089:80
    volumes:
      - '/opt/data/wp_testweb/html:/var/www/html'
    depends_on:
      - testweb_db
    environment:
      - PUID=1001
      - PGID=1001
      - WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=testweb_db_host
      - WORDPRESS_DB_USER=wp_user
      - WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=testweb_db
      - WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=Sup35ComplexPass
    restart: unless-stopped

networks:
  proxy_nw:
    external: true
    name: proxy_default
  hosts_nw:
    external: true
    name: data_default

Powering UP the docker containers

The above configuration is to be saved as docker-compose.yaml and run following command from the saved folder.

docker-compose up -d

If your docker-compose fails with the following error,

ERROR: The Compose file './docker-compose.yaml' is invalid because:
networks.hosts_nw value Additional properties are not allowed ('name' was unexpected)
networks.proxy_nw value Additional properties are not allowed ('name' was unexpected)

The docker-compose has to be upgraded to the latest version. The latest stable version is now v2.1.1

sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.1.1/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Reboot the server for the changes to take effect and install the package gnome-keyring

# To reboot the server
sudo reboot

# Install gnome-keyring package
sudo apt install gnome-keyring

Now execute the command again “docker-compose up -d”

Summary

Now the containers are up and running. Verify with the command ” docker ps”

ubuntu@dockhost:/opt/data/wp_testweb$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                        COMMAND                  CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                   NAMES
46ae07cacda9   linuxserver/mariadb:latest   "/init"                  21 seconds ago   Up 17 seconds   3306/tcp                                wp_testweb-testweb_db_host-1
15c2f3ac5099   wordpress:latest             "docker-entrypoint.s…"   23 seconds ago   Up 16 seconds   0.0.0.0:8089->80/tcp, :::8089->80/tcp   wp_testweb-testweb_wp-1

Open any web browser and access the URL http://<ipaddress>:8089/

Well, you have your wordpress running !

Hope you like this article and thank you for reading.

For any industry, IT or non-IT, Information or data is the key. There are various ways by which the information can be stored. Financial or structured data usually takes a table form and resides in a database. In the case of the non-structured generic data such as project documentation, knowledge base or personal documentation can be maintained well using a documentation platform rather than keeping it in files.

By keeping these informations in a platform, it is very easy to manage, edit, search the content as compared to the handling of files.

Introduction

There are many such platforms out in the market which we can use. Confluence by Atlassian is one such feature-rich platform. It also does provide a free edition with 2GB storage. If you like to keep all your data with you, self hosting will be best option.

Of all the products, BookStack is the one which I like the most. Bookstack is free and open source and the page editor has a simple WYSIWYG interface. BookStack has a very simple interface and all content can be broken down into Shelf, Books, Chapters, and Pages. It has built-in diagrams.net for easy creation of diagrams and many more.

In this article, we will discuss how to self-host BookStack in docker.

Prerequisites

Linux Server

The prerequisite is to have a Linux OS either in a public cloud or in your home server. Here I am using Ubuntu 20.04.

Docker Engine Installation

The latest stable version of the docker can be installed by executing just 2 lines of code in your Linux shell. Detailed documentation is available at https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh get-docker.sh

Add the current user (user ubuntu in my case) to the docker group

sudo usermod -aG docker ubuntu

Close the session and re-login for the user to update the permission

Bookstack Installation

Bookstack uses a SQL database to store the data. We use MariaDB as our database. Both the BookStack and MariaDB docker container images are from https://www.linuxserver.io/

Docker Network configuration

Let’s create a network the containers

sudo docker network create --subnet 10.10.10.0/24 data_default

Database Installation

Execute the below docker command to install the DB container.

docker run -d \
--name=bookstackdb \
-e PUID=1001 \
-e PGID=1001 \
-e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=pass123456 \
-e MYSQL_DATABASE=bookstackapp \
-e MYSQL_USER=bookstackuser \
-e MYSQL_PASSWORD=pass123456997 \
-v /opt/data/bookstack/db:/config \
--restart unless-stopped \
--network=data_default \
linuxserver/mariadb

Running the above command will download the MariaDB image and create a container from the repository and run it with the specified configuration as mentioned in the environment variables. The container will be attached to the data_default network with the name bookstackdb.

The data folder will be created “/opt/data/bookstack/db” if not already exist.

BookStack Installation

Execute the below docker command to install the BookStack container

docker run -d \
--name=bookstack \
-e PUID=1001 \
-e PGID=1001 \
-e DB_HOST=bookstackdb \
-e DB_USER=bookstackuser \
-e DB_PASS=pass123456997  \
-e DB_DATABASE=bookstackapp \
-e APP_URL=http://wiki.yourdomain.com:5865 \
-p 5865:80 \
-v /opt/data/bookstack/config:/config \
--restart unless-stopped \
--network=data_default \
linuxserver/bookstack

Make sure to properly configure the environment variables such as – database user and password, URL, port, etc.

To check the container status, run “docker ps” and it should show the below result. Book stack is listening at port 5865.

ubuntu@webserver:/opt/data/bookstack$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                   COMMAND   CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                            NAMES
33effffbf170   linuxserver/bookstack   "/init"   3 minutes ago    Up 2 minutes    443/tcp, 0.0.0.0:5865->80/tcp, :::5865->80/tcp   bookstack
b7540622f83b   linuxserver/mariadb     "/init"   25 minutes ago   Up 25 minutes   3306/tcp                                         bookstackdb

Make necessary DNS entry to point the domain wiki.domain.com to the virtual machine IP and all set. BookStack is ready for use.

Final Steps

Open any web browser and type in the URL http://wiki.yourdomain.com:5865 to access your wiki site.

This should take us to the BookStack login

The default admin login of BookStack is admin@admin.com with the password password

Ensure to change the login email and the password after you login. Refer to the BookStack documentation https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/admin/security/ for further configuration

Hope you liked this article and thank you for reading

Let’s Encrypt is one of the CA who provide free SSL certificate for the websites. The free certificate is having 90 days validity.

In this article, we will see how to get FREE SSL certificate for the website.

In the previous post, we saw how to publish WordPress website in Ubuntu Linux. Using the free SSL, we will secure the website.

Step-1 : Setting Domain Name

To setup SSL for the website, the site need to have a domain name with A record pointing to the website IP address. The domain here is moneyworkforme.in and the dns is having A record pointing to wesite IP address and www as cname record referring to the domain name.

The DNS setting can be changed in the doman registrar website or in the third party DNS provider console if custom name server is configured.

Step-2 : Setup WordPress URL

Browser and login to the WordPress website admin portal. http://<ip-address>/wp-admin

Change the WordPress Address URL and Site Address URL to the domain name – www.moneyworkforme.in

After the settings are saved, the browser refresh to the wp-admin page with the domain name as suffix instead of the IP address.

Step-3 : Installing Certbot

We need to install certbot package to get certificate from the CA and python3-certbot-apache plugin which integrates Certbot with Apache to automate certificate renewal and https configuration in the web server.

sudo apt install certbot 
sudo apt install python3-certbot-apache

Step-4 : Apache Virtual Host Configuration

To obtain SSL certificate for the web server, Certbot needs to find the website domain name and the alias name within the Apache configuration files. This information will be retrieved from the ServerName and ServerAlias fields defined in the configuration file.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

In the configuration file, add the following entries –

ServerName moneyworkforme.in
ServerAlias www.moneyworkforme.in

Step-5 : Allow HTTPS Port

Enable the tcp port 443 to accept https traffic

sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

Make the firewall changes permanent

sudo netfilter-persistent save

Step-6 : Install Let’s Encrypt Certificate

sudo certbot --apache --agree-tos --email info@tekcookie.com --redirect -d moneyworkforme.in -d www.moneyworkforme.in

Parameters:
–apache: Use Apache2 Let’s Encrypt installer.
–agree-tos: Agree to Let’s Encrypt terms of service.
–redirect: Adds 301 redirect.
–email: Contact email address.
–d: add the domain name and alias name.

The “IMPORTANT NOTES” section shows the path where the certificate is downloaded.

Lets verify the same, list the items under /etc/letsencrypt/live/moneyworkforme.in to view the certificate files.

Step-7 : Setup Certificate Auto-Renewal

Automating the certificate makes the administration job easier as the certificate validity is only 90 days. Test the status of Certbot before adding the same to crontab

Check the status of the Certbot

sudo systemctl status certbot.timer

Testing the renewal process by dry run with certbot

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Configuring Crontab for scheduling certificate auto renewal.

sudo crontab -e

Select the appropriate text editor when prompted and add the below statement.

0 1 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew & > /dev/null

Step-8 : Fix HTTPS Redirection

When the SSL certificate is installed, the Certbot auto configures Apache2 with http to https redirection. But the auto configured redirection only works with URL having domain name (I.e http://moneyworkforme.in to https://moneyworkforme.in) but not for the IP address. To redirect http traffic with IP address in the URL to domain name, modify Apache Virtual Host Configuration.

Replace the following snippet as shown below under VirtualHost tag

Auto configured settings

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =www.moneyworkforme.in [OR]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =moneyworkforme.in
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]

Replace the above with

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^/(.*) https://www.moneyworkforme.in/$1 [R,L]

And the WordPress site is now secured with Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate.

Hope this article is informative to you. Thank you for reading my post.

This article describes about how to install WordPress on Ubuntu.

WordPress is a Free and Open-Source content management system developed in php with MySQL as back-end with the capability to extent or implement functionality by using plugins and UI modifications via Themes.

Here, we will Install WordPress in a very small Instance of Linux VM. The installation is done through shell.

System Specs:
Processor - 1 vCPU
Memory - 1 Gb
OS Version - Ubuntu 20.04

Note: This is not an ideal specs for installing WordPress, but works fine for blogs and personal websites.

After the installation of Ubuntu, update and upgrade the OS

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Once the operating system is updated, follow below steps for installing WordPress

Step-1 : Install Apache Web Server

sudo apt install apache2 -y

Once the installation is completed, check the apache service status

systemctl status apache2

Step-2 : Enable Firewall settings to allow http traffic

sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

To make the changes permanent even after server restart, run the following command

sudo netfilter-persistent save

Test the above by typing the server ip address in the web browser, we will be able to see the apache default page in the web browser.

Step-3 : Install php package

Run below command to install the latest version of php and associated package

sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-common php-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-soap php-gd php-xml php-intl php-mysql php-cli php php-ldap php-zip php-curl -y

Step-4 : Test php Installation

Create a test php file and browse the page in web browser

sudo vi /var/www/html/testpage.php

in the nano editor, add below snippet and save

<?php
echo "The website is working !!!";
?>

Open web browser and browse http://<ip-address>/testpage.php

Step-5 : Install Database – MariaDB

Execute the below command to install Maria DB

sudo apt install mariadb-server -y

Note: This installation will take some time to finish.

Once the installation is completed, execute below command to do the initial config.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

The shell will prompt for input when the above command is executed. Follow the input given in the screenshot to complete the setup.

Step-6 : Configure Database

Login to mysql as root and create the database for wordpress

sudo mysql -u root

Create database and assign permission using below snippet

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP,ALTER ON wordpress.* TO 'wpuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Step-7 : Download and Install WordPress

Navigate to home directory and download WordPress package

cd /home/ubuntu
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Extract the package and copy to the root web folder

tar xf latest.tar.gz
sudo mv wordpress/ /var/www/html/

Modify WordPress folder permission and ownership

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress/
sudo chmod 755 -R /var/www/html/wordpress/

Create Upload folder and change ownership

sudo mkdir /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/uploads
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/

Step-8 : Make WordPress folder as default web path

Edit apache config file and add the following config details under the tag <VirtualHost *:80>

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
   DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wordpress
   <Directory /var/www/html/wordpress/> 
      Options FollowSymLinks 
      AllowOverride Limit Options FileInfo 
      DirectoryIndex index.php 
      Order allow,deny 
      Allow from all 
   </Directory> 
   <Directory /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content> 
      Options FollowSymLinks 
      Order allow,deny 
      Allow from all 
   </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Restart apache service

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step-9 : Final Settings in Linux

Enable url rewrite feature and restart apache

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Finally, the linux side configuration is completed.

Step-10 : WordPress Configuration

Let’s go to web browser to configure the rest in WordPress. Open web browser and browse the server IP address

Select language and click on Continue

Click on “Let’s go!” button to configure the database details to complete WordPress configuration

Enter the database details as per we have configured in Step-6

WordPress will proceed to the above page if the DB information entered is correct. Click on “Run the installation”

Enter the required login information in WordPress and click “Install WordPress”

Finally, the installation is completed and WordPress website is ready !!!

To view the website, navigate to http://<ip-address>

To view website admin portal, navigate to http://<ip-address>/wp-admin

Enter the login credential which was set during the installation process and click on “Log In”

Now, its all your. This completes the installation of WordPress in Ubuntu.

Testing the site performance

Browse to url “https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/” and paste the website url. Click on “Analyze” button to get the results

The results are excellent, but this is just a plain website. Once we add more contents, plugins and themes. The analysis rating may go down.

After all, its just 1 CPU and 1GB RAM. Good for blogging and personal websites. As your traffic increases, you can find alternatives which gives more processing power.

Hope you liked the article. Thank you for reading.

When memory demand increases and the available memory is less, inactive pages in the RAM is moved to swap space and thereby releasing resource in the main memory. Though hard disk supports RAM for immediate memory demand, it cannot be considered as an alternative to RAM because of the slow input output operation capability in hard disk.

This article describes about how to check the utilization of swap memory space in our system.

OS Information : Debian GNU/Linux 9

The FREE command

Free command is used to display memory free and used memory.

Parameter “-h” displays size in nearest possible 3 digit format.

Command:

free -h

Output:

The TOP command

This command is used to view the running processes in the system.

The header section displays the swap memory utilization

Command:

top

Output:

The VMSTAT command

This command shows information about virtual memory statistics

Command:

vmstat

Output:

/proc/swaps file

This command shows swap file and device name

Command:

cat /proc/swaps

Output:

This commands helps the administrators monitor the swap memory utilization.

Thank you for reading the article. Hope this is helpful to you.