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Installing Vagrant on Linux Mint

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This article will cover installing Vagrant on Linux Mint, but what is Vagrant? Vagrant is a useful tool for setting up testing and development virtual machines on Linux. Setting it up on Debian and Ubuntu based distributions like Linux Mint is quite straight forward and the following guide will go over the main steps. For further information, Vagrant itself has some great docs http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/. It covers installation of Vagrant on various Linux distros as well as more advanced management and configuration, but here’s a quick start:

Installing Vagrant on Linux Mint

First, open up a terminal and install virtual box, the kernel sources and vagrant all in one neat step:
sudo apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-dkms vagrant

Please note that the version in Mint/Ubuntu’s repositories is not the latest one. If you’ve using tools such as PuPHPet you’ll need to grab the latest version of Vagrant from the Vagrant downloads page.

Make a new sub directory in your home folder for your Vagrant machines files to be stored in:
mkdir ~/vagrant

Now lets get create a VM. Pick what machine you want from the Vagrant Boxes (http://www.vagrantbox.es/). I’m going to use Debian 7.3. You need to copy the box URL.

Make sure you’re in your vagrant directory:

cd ~/vagrant

Initialise the vagrant box. This creates a configuration file for it which you can use to change key settings before you start it up

vagrant init debs http://puppet-vagrant-boxes.puppetlabs.com/debian-73-x64-virtualbox-nocm.box

Make configuration changes if you want to. I like to set a hostname and have the machine appear on my main network so I can access it from other computers

nano Vagrantfile

These are the additional lines I put in:

# Set the machines hostname
config .vm.hostname = "debs7"

# Setup a network bridge
config.vm.network :public_network

Now you can start the vagrant box. It’ll download the image first time so it might be a little slow to get going.
vagrant up

Once done, you can access it using
vagrant ssh

Setting up PHP XDebug in PHPStorm

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Setting up XDebug in Apache

First off, ensure that the modules have been installed for php and xdebug:
sudo apt-get install php5-dev php5-cli php-pear
sudo pecl install xdebug

Now the packages should be installed, we need to find the default location for PHP and xdebug. Take note of both resulting directories:
which php5
sudo find / -name 'xdebug.so'

Horrah, we have our paths for the xdebug plugin so we can edit the approrpaite PHP files. There are two exciting options here:

Number 1 – you can edit PHP ini directly and add the code (later)

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

Number 2 – you can edit the conf.d/20-xdebug.so file and edd the code (later)

nano /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-xdebug.ini

Code for PHP.ini or 20-xdebug.so:

# This should be the directory you received from the find command you used earlier
zend_extension = /usr/lib/php5/20121212/xdebug.so
# These settings enable a connection to sublime text.
# If you're using PHP storm you can use the same settings,
# with other programs mileage may vary
zend_extension=xdebug.so
xdebug.remote_enable=On
xdebug.remote_host="localhost"
xdebug.remote_port=9000
xdebug.remote_handler="dbgp"
xdebug.remote_autostart=1

Now it’s a good idea to restart apache so xdebug is loaded:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

 

Setting up XDebug in PHPStorm

At this point you will need to open PHP Storm to configure it with Xdebug. Once it’s open go to:

File -> Settings

Select PHP from the left hand menu

click … on interpreter

hit the “reload” button and xdebug should appear.

Click ok.

click debug on left hand column

make sure xdebug options are enabled.

Bookmarks

You need to create new book marks in your web browser. You can either follow the guide at it’s source, or keep following what’s in the article:
http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/marklets/

Start xDebug


javascript:(/** @version 0.5.2 */function() {document.cookie='XDEBUG_SESSION='+'PHPSTORM'+';path=/;';})()

Stop xDebug


javascript:(/** @version 0.5.2 */function() {document.cookie='XDEBUG_SESSION='+''+';expires=Mon, 05 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMT;path=/;';})()

Debug this page


javascript:(/** @version 0.5.2 */function() {document.cookie='XDEBUG_SESSION='+'PHPSTORM'+';path=/;';document.location.reload();document.cookie='XDEBUG_SESSION='+''+';expires=Mon, 05 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMT;path=/;';})()

Checking a hard drive’s SMART status from the Linux command line

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SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) allows you to gather and assess if a hard drive has or is near failure. On Debian and Ubuntu based systems (including both flavors of Mint) the smartmontools package contains everything you need to check your drives.

It’s usually a good idea to make sure your Linux distrobution’s repositories are up to date:

sudo apt-get update

Start by installing the smartmontools package to give you access to the utilities to check your hard drive from the command line:

sudo apt-get install smartmontools

Once the package is installed, you can start checking your hard drives. It’s a good idea to run a short test first. To do this type the command below, replacing /dev/sda with your hard drive.

smartctl --test=short /dev/sda

The command will tell you how long it is going to take to test the drive. Normally this is only a few minutes for a short test but can be hours for a longer one:

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: “Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode”.
Drive command “Execute SMART Short self-test routine immediately in off-line mode” successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 2 minutes for test to complete.

Once you’ve waited for the drive test to finish you can check the health status of your hard drive. Your first option is a summary telling you if it’s passed or failed:

smartctl -H /dev/sda

If you want more information on the status of your hard drive you can run the following command:

smartctl -a /dev/sda

In the event you find anything you’d consider to be suspicious or your hard drive has been acting strangely you can run a longer test, but this usually takes a few hours to complete:

smartctl --test=long /dev/sda

It’s important to note that a SMART test is only one indication of a failing hard drive. You could test a drive and it pass but still fail the following day. Clicking noises are a good indication of a hard drive that has or is about to fail. You should always have a good backup of all of your data. If your hard drive does fail your disk provider may have tools available on their website to allow you to check them or require you to provide information for an RMA.

7z (7zip) errors with unsupported method message

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When trying to extract a .rar file with 7zip I encountered an error about an unsupported method. The directory contents of the file were listed, however it wouldn’t extract the files. After alittle reserach I discovered you required the following apparently unreleated plugin: p7zip-rar

sudo apt-get install p7z-rar

after installation, re-run your 7zip command and it will work fine

7z x filename.rar

This applies to 7-zip on Ubuntu and Debian distributions. It may also work for other distributions, however it has not been tested.

Install the full version of 7zip with the rar extensions

To install the full version of 7zip, including the p7zip-rar package to solve the unsupported method error when extracting .rar files use the following command:
sudo apt-get install p7zip-full p7zip-rar