Practical Liferay Series: Liferay on Docker

By Robert Hall

In the process of developing portals with Liferay, it is often necessary to set up and tear down servers with a Liferay instance on them.   There are many ways of accomplishing this, such as using VMs, AWS EC2 instances, etc.    One approach that has the promise of being simple, repeatable and lightweight is using new open source tools such as Vagrant and Docker to create a virtual application container.  This post will explore a simple scenario--bringing up a Liferay server in a lightweight container on a virtual server instance.

What is Vagrant

Vagrant is an open-source tool for creating and configuring virtual development environments.  It can be used to create Linux (various distributions such as Ubuntu and CentOS are supported) instances on a variety of hosting platforms, including Virtual Box (local to your computer) or cloud services such as AWS.

What is Docker

Docker is an open-source engine to automate the deployment of applications as self-contained, portable containers independent of hardware, language, framework, packaging system and hosting provider.   Think of it as building a sandbox with a deployed, configured application inside.

Creating a Ubuntu VM with Vagrant

If you are already working on Linux, you can skip this section and go to ‘Creating a Docker container’.  As I am working on a Mac, I have to set up a Linux--in this case, Ubuntu, environment with Vagrant before installing Docker as Docker presently only works on Linux. Note:  In the example scenarios in this post, '%' or '#' denote a Linux command prompt.
1. create work folder such as '/home/user/dev/vagrant
2. create a Vagrant file. This example is for Ubuntu with Virutal Box. Other hosting providers such as AWS can be specified. Think of this as the configuration of your new virtual machine.  The 'config.vm.forward_port' is of importance as this a directive to tell Vagrant to forward port 8080 as 7991.  So when we run Liferay on the virtual server on port 8080, it will be accessible via the browser as localhost:7991.

Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
config.vm.box = "raring"
config.vm.box_url = "http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/raring/current/raring-server-cloudimg-vagrant-amd64-disk1.box"
config.vm.forward_port 8080, 7991
config.vm.share_folder("vagrant-root", "/vagrant", ".")
config.vm.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--memory", 2048
end

% /Applications/Vagrant/bin/vagrant up

% /Applications/Vagrant/bin/vagrant ssh

% sudo apt-get install linux-image-extra-$(uname -r)   (answer 'y')
% sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-raring linux-headers-generic-lts-raring

% sudo apt-get install vim curl git sudo zip
% sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
% sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

% sudo apt-get update

% sudo reboot

Creating a Docker Container

Docker is available as a Ubuntu PPA (Personal Package Archive), hosted on launchpad which makes installing Docker on Ubuntu straightforward.
1. Add the PPA sources to your apt sources list.

% sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dotcloud/lxc-docker   (ENTER to continue when prompted)

% sudo apt-get update

% sudo apt-get install lxc-docker    (y to continue)

% sudo docker pull base

% sudo docker images

% sudo docker run -i -t ubuntu  /bin/bash

root@209c4fc1eeaa:/#

Installing Java

In this container – which is a lightweight and sealed vm-like space isolated from the rest of your computer – we can install a JVM and its dependencies:
1. install some dependencies

# apt-get install software-properties-common  (y to continue)
# apt-get install python-software-properties (y to continue)
# apt-get install sudo vim curl zip   (y to continue)

# echo '127.0.0.1 localhost 209c4fc1eeaa dockerlr' | cat > /etc/hosts

# add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java  (ENTER to continue when prompted)
# apt-get update

# apt-get install software-properties-common -y apt-add-repository ppa:webupd8team/java -y
# apt-get update echo oracle-java7-installer shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1 select true |
sudo /usr/bin/debconf-set-selections
# apt-get install oracle-java7-installer -y
# exit

% sudo docker ps -a
209c4fc1eeaa         ubuntu:12.04        /bin/bash           32 minutes ago      Exit 0

% sudo docker commit 209c4fc1eeaa  rhall/java7

% sudo docker images
REPOSITORY          TAG                 ID                  CREATED             SIZE
base                latest              b750fe79269d        4 months ago        24.65 kB (virtual 180.1 MB)
base                ubuntu-12.10        b750fe79269d        4 months ago        24.65 kB (virtual 180.1 MB)
base                ubuntu-quantal      b750fe79269d        4 months ago        24.65 kB (virtual 180.1 MB)
base                ubuntu-quantl       b750fe79269d        4 months ago        24.65 kB (virtual 180.1 MB)
ubuntu              12.04               8dbd9e392a96        4 months ago        131.5 MB (virtual 131.5 MB)
ubuntu              12.10               b750fe79269d        4 months ago        24.65 kB (virtual 180.1 MB)
ubuntu              latest              8dbd9e392a96        4 months ago        131.5 MB (virtual 131.5 MB)
ubuntu              precise             8dbd9e392a96        4 months ago        131.5 MB (virtual 131.5 MB)
ubuntu              quantal             b750fe79269d        4 months ago        24.65 kB (virtual 180.1 MB)
rhall/java7         latest              23143436f87b        55 seconds ago      472.9 MB (virtual 604.4 MB)

Installing Liferay CE

We now have a reusable Docker container consisting of Ubuntu with Java 7 installed.  This is the minimum for installing Liferay CE.   Spin up a Docker instance using the java7 image.

% sudo docker run -i -t -h dockerlr -p :8080 -v /opt/lr-home rhall/java7 /bin/bash

# cd /opt/lr-home

# wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/lportal/files/Liferay%20Portal/6.1.1%20GA2/
liferay-portal-tomcat-6.1.1-ce-ga2-20120731132656558.zip

# unzip *.zip

# sudo /opt/lr-home/liferay-portal-6.1.1-ce-ga2/tomcat-7.0.27/bin/startup.sh -fg

# sudo vi /etc/init.d/liferay

# Liferay auto-start
# description: Auto-starts liferay
# processname: liferay
# pidfile: /var/run/liferay.pid
case $1 in
start)
sh /opt/lr-home/liferay-portal-6.1.1-ce-ga2/tomcat-7.0.27/bin/startup.sh
;;
stop)
sh /opt/lr-home/liferay-portal-6.1.1-ce-ga2/tomcat-7.0.27/bin/shutdown.sh
;;
restart)
sh /opt/lr-home/liferay-portal-6.1.1-ce-ga2/tomcat-7.0.27/bin/shutdown.sh
sh /opt/lr-home/liferay-portal-6.1.1-ce-ga2/tomcat-7.0.27/bin/startup.sh
;;
esac
exit 0

# sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/liferay

# sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/liferay /etc/rc1.d/K99liferay
# sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/liferay /etc/rc2.d/S99liferay

Running Liferay

To start Liferay from the command line,

# service liferay start

# service liferay stop

# exit

% sudo docker ps -a
ID                    IMAGE                COMMAND         CREATED           STATUS       PORTS
50b10bb82488        rhall/java7:latest   /bin/bash       17 minutes ago      Exit 0
209c4fc1eeaa        ubuntu:12.04         /bin/bash       26 minutes ago     Exit 0

% sudo docker commit 50b10bb82488 rhall/liferayCEConfigured

% sudo docker images

Dockerfile

In a manner similar to a Vagrantfile, Docker supports scripting with  a Dockerfile.  This configuration can be built, comitted as an image, and run.   For example, a Dockerfile for running Liferay could be:

FROM rhall/LiferayCEConfigured
MAINTAINER Robert Hall "robert.hall@isostech.com"
EXPOSE 8080
CMD service liferay start && tail -f /opt/lr-home/liferay-portal-6.1.1-ce-ga2/tomcat-7.0.27/logs/catalina.out

% sudo docker build -t rhall/LiferayCERun .

% sudo docker run -d -h dockerlr -p :8080 rhall/LiferayCERun

% sudo docker ps -a

% sudo docker kill ff59dd05989a

Conclusions

Creating and provisioning working, isolated environments for application containers/servers such as Liferay, Tomcat or others can be simplified and standardized by using such virtualization tools as Vagrant and Docker.   By using them together, you can quickly create a reusable, consistent operating environment for your application container.

References

Vagrant Documentation
Getting Started with Vagrant
Docker Site
Getting Started with Docker
Docker Command Line Interface
LXC Project