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MySQL in Docker for Local Development

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Outside of my standard docker-compose setup for Laravel, I find myself requiring one-off MySQL instances for short pieces of development, debugging or testing. Instead of building a whole container ecosystem to do this, if I can get away with it I simply run MySQL as a docker container, binding it to the local machine’s ports.

The MySQL docker container is available on docker hub https://hub.docker.com/_/mysql which provides some basic usage instructions. I’m going to outline how I use MySQL in docker for this one off work.

Almost everything I do is based on the older MySQL 5.7. That means I need to use that image specifically when running docker. In order to make sure my local container is up to date and ready and waiting for use I tend to run a docker pull command on my dev machine as soon as it’s setup. 

docker pull mysql:5.7

Version information is available on the MySQL docker hub page if you need a different version of MySQL. Now that the docker image is held locally it’s much easier to just start up a container whenever you need it and it will not spend ages re-downloading.

Understanding the Basics of MySQL’s Docker Container

There’s a few things I do with my containers. Firstly I want to expose the container to the host machine. This allows database administration tools like MySQL Workbench or Datagrip to connect to the MySQL docker instance. It also allows code to talk to it, and often this is what I want to do. It’s important not to overlap these ports, but generally I don’t run a temporary MySQL container along side any development stacks or local installs so I bind to the default port (3306). To do this I add the -p 3306:3306 flag to the command. If you want to change the external port (the one you’re using to connect to MySQL inside docker), then change the port number before the colon (:) like so -p 1234:3306. This maps port 1234 on your machine to the docker containers port 3306 inside the container.

Next, a root password and default database should be created. You could skip database creation and do it later with the management tool of your choice, but I find this easier. There’s two environment variables to set and I usually pick a short, insecure password for MySQL’s root account as this is only a test locally and firewalled on my dev machine. -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=toor sets the root password to “toor” (root backwards. This was a default on a few Linux distros for a while). Setting the default database is just as easy -e MYSQL_DATABASE=dev. In this case it’s creating a database called “dev”.

Finally, I tend to name the docker container so I can run it again easily if required. I do this long hand with --name mysql57 where “mysql57” is the name of the container I’m creating. You can name this per project if it makes more sense for you, but I do regularly delete and recreate this container as it’s outside my usual dev workflow and usually just for debugging/fixing something once.

Creating a Named MySQL Docker Container Exposed to the Host

Rolling it all together you can run this command to create a named MySQL 5.7 instance that is running in the background (-d).

docker run --name mysql57 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=toor -e MYSQL_DATABASE=dev -p 3306:3306 -d mysql:5.7

Restore Backups to a MySQL Docker Container

If you have a database backup you need to restore, then it’s reasonably easy to pass it into MySQL, although if it’s a big database then it can take some time to do. This can be done by using cat to read the backup file and feeding it into the MySQL docker container. If you’re a user who doesn’t have native docker permissions (like on Ubuntu, which requires sudo docker) then it may be best to change to a user that does have permissions (sudo -i to switch to root, then run the backup restore command).

cat database_backup.sql | docker exec -i mysql57 /usr/bin/mysql -u root --password=toor dev

Backing up a Database Inside MySQL’s Docker Container

If you need to backup your MySQL docker database from the container, you can do so by running the mysqldump command that the container has installed by default, passing it container name, username, password and database you’ve defined when creating the container and defining the output file to save the database dump to.

docker exec mysql57 /usr/bin/mysqldump -u root --password=toor dev > dev_backup.sql

Cleaning up

Once you’re done with your MySQL container, you can stop and delete it by running the following commands, making sure to replace the container name (“mysql57”) with the name of your container if you happened to change it:

docker stop mysql57
docker rm mysql57

That’s it! You’ve created a named docker container running MySQL 5.7. You’ve exposed it to the host machine using port binding and learned how to restore a database backup to it. It’s not as useful as a full docker-compose stack for development. If you’re interested in a docker-compose dev environment check out this article. It does, however give you quick and easy MySQL access when you just need to poke around a database.

Docker WordPress Increase PHP Max File Size

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I’ve recently been working with WordPress inside docker containers and discovered that file uploads are limited to 2MB, the apache default when using the official WordPress docker image. I don’t know of any sites that I’ve worked on that can actually work with only 2MB (possibly that is an indication of how abused WordPress is to turn it into something beyond a simple blogging platform). This brief guide provides you with one possible way of increasing the WordPress maximum file upload size in docker.

Firstly, create an uploads.ini file, content is defined below

upload_max_filesize = 16M
post_max_size = 16M

Now either mount the file using volumes in docker, or using docker compose. Below is an example except using docker-compose

wordpress:
  image: wordpress:latest
  ports:
    - "80:80"
  volumes:
    - ./uploads.ini:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/uploads.ini
    - ./wp-content:/var/www/html/wp-content/

Optimising Nginx for PHP & WordPress (Time To First Byte)

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When running page speed insights, it seems that TTFB (Time To First Byte) is something that it really doesn’t like when checking performance.

To solve this, we can use nginx’s caching of compiled PHP pages. Even better, the cache can be a RAM disk, making it very responsive.

First, create a directory for the RAM disk:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/nginx-cache

Now create an entry in the fstab file so it’s mounted to the RAM disk on boot:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

tmpfs /mnt/nginx-cache tmpfs rw,size=2048M 0 0

This creates a 2GB RAM disk. Edit the size as appropriate for your server. Then mount it:

sudo mount /mnt/nginx-cache

Now, create a cache configuration file for Nginx:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/cache.conf

fastcgi_cache_path /etc/nginx-cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=phpcache:512m inactive=2h max_size=1024m;
fastcgi_cache_key "$scheme$request_method$host$request_uri";

This creates a cache of 1GB with a default time of 2 hours. Next update the config files for your website – change your config file name where appropriate.

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite.conf

Inside of the location ~ "^(.+\.php)($|/)" { section, add:

# ----------------------------------------------
# Caching
# ----------------------------------------------
# This defines which cache to use (defined in /etc/nginx/cache.conf)
fastcgi_cache phpcache;
# Cache only 200 Okay responses for 2 hours
fastcgi_cache_valid 200 2h;
# Don't cache POST requests, only GET
fastcgi_cache_methods GET HEAD;
# Optional. Add a header to prove it works
add_header X-Fastcgi-Cache $upstream_cache_status;

now you should be able to restart nginx sudo service nginx restart and access the site via a web browser. Then you can use something like developer tools access the headers of the web requests. You should find a header:

X-Fastcgi-Cache: HIT

 

Recommended starter hosting providers for 2014

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These are my recommended hosting providers of 2014, all of whom offer Linux machines running Ubuntu or Debian:
Linode offer a wide range of VPS solutions in multiple locations. They have a good community behind them with some great tutorials. Their control panel makes things easy to manage too. There are pay-more additions like load balancers so if you think you’re going to grow your sites quickly or get lots of traffic it’s worth going with them as a more mature hosting provider.

Digital Ocean have been making a big name for themselves in the past year. Their machines are much faster than a traditional VPS as they’re an SSD only hosting provider, so no old spinning disks to slow things down. They have a wide range of tutorials and Q&A sections on their site which are growing rapidly. The web interface is easy to use, but I’m not too keen on the spin-up process yet as they insist on providing you a password via email.

Bytemark offer a cloud platform similar to both Linode and Digital Ocean. They’re a smaller team based in the UK and the platform is still maturing, but Bytemark are always my first port of call for hosting services. They sponsor many open source events and projects, and even offer hosting to the Debian project.

Speed up Apache Websites with Expires Headers

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Page speed can be a big issue for site owners, developers and systems administrators alike. There are many things you can do at an application level to improve performance, but that takes a long time to review, write, test and implement. What about the quick gains, the things you can do quite easily that will improve performance? Well it turns out that you can speed up an Apache based webserver by simply enabling a module: expires headers.

Expires headers are part of the the computer code that gets exchanged when you access a page. You browser requests a page by sending a request to it, and the server responds with information indicating what it is that has been returned. As part of this response there’s a section called “Expires”. This indicates when the content that has been accessed on the website is going to “expire”. To understand this a bit better, you need to know that when a website’s content is loaded, it’s downloaded to your computer to be rendered in your browser. Once the site is on your screen, if expires headers are not set, each time you load the site it’s going to be downloaded again. This is a performace hit to you, your internet connection and your computer. Expires headers tell the computer to store content temporarily (“Cache” the content) on your computer. When you visit the site again in 5 minutes, if expires headers are set correctly, you’ll only download part of the information on the page.

So what should be cached? Well, here’s what content types I tend to set expires headers on:

  • Images (jpg, png, gif)
  • CSS
  • Javascript
  • content such as mp3, mov, mp4 and others that don’t change regularly

How do you do it? You can Speed up websites that operate on Apache using mod_expires. This is really simple to setup and configure if you know how to configure sites on the command line.

Enable the module

a2enmod expires

Edit the configuration file. This can be done in either /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mysite.conf or /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/expires.conf. The virtualhost configuration file will enable it for a single site, the mods-enabled configuration file will enable it for all sites. Choose one and edit it with a command line text editor like nano. Enter the following:

          ExpiresActive on

          ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 30 days"
          ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 30 days"
          ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 30 days"
          ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 30 days"

          ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 7 days"

          ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 month"

          ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 1 day"
          ExpiresByType audio/x-wav "access plus 1 month"
          ExpiresByType audio/mpeg "access plus 1 month"
          ExpiresByType video/mpeg "access plus 1 month"
          ExpiresByType video/mp4 "access plus 1 month"
          ExpiresByType video/quicktime "access plus 1 month"
          ExpiresByType video/x-ms-wmv "access plus 1 month"
          ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"

          ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 week"
          ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 week"
          ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 week"

Now restart or reload apache to apply the configuration

service apache2 restart

You can see from the code that the expires time has been set by content type. Each is different, depending on how often it’s expected to change and how big the file types are going to be. For example – a movie file is unlikely to change frequently, but is likely to be large, so if it’s got an expires header telling the browser to store it locally for up to 1 month after the date on which it was first accessed it. This makes the site faster to load. Now when someone loads a site on your server, it will store content after the initial page load and reduce subsequent loading time.

 

For further information on improving page speed you can check out Yahoo’s excellent article here: https://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

Why not checkout the Firefox and Chrome plugin “YSlow” which checks a range of potential speed issues and offers solutions:

Google also has some useful tools and guides which can be found here: https://developers.google.com/speed/

Moz also has a brief article on the subject here: http://moz.com/blog/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website