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SynchWeb Podman Production Environment

Introduction

The following instructions allow a containerised Production environment for running SynchWeb to be set up. They create and run a Podman image which runs the SynchWeb backend code and hosts the frontend web client using httpd. For this to work, the config.php file included in this repo must be updated to include details specific to the Production environment - including valid connection string data to an ISPyB database - i.e. via the $isb variable.

Setup

  1. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/DiamondLightSource/SynchWeb.git
  2. Adjust Dockerfile to point to the correct release/branch to clone into the container (if PHP 5.4 is wanting to be used, use the Dockerfile-php-5.4 file).
  3. Add config.php to same directory as the Dockerfile - adjusting details as appropriate for the Production environment deployment (at a minimum setting a valid value for $isb)
  4. Update php.ini to include any settings whose default values you wish to override.
  5. Generate SSL certificate and key (e.g. see here). Place these in the same directory as the Dockerfile. Note, the names should be cert.pem and key.pem - to match the httpd.conf configuration.
  6. Ensure you have a valid ssh key set up for github.com access (required to retrieve some DHL php libraries) - instructions here.
  7. Run setup_synchweb_prod.bash - note, this can take one input arg: setup_synchweb.bash <image-name>. If no args are specified, an image called synchweb-prod is built and run.

This will run a container with the SynchWeb backend running and the frontend built and hosted on an httpd server. This will be available at http://localhost:8082. The actual SynchWeb code will be downloaded locally and mounted into the container.

Troubleshooting

If SynchWeb does not work as expected, review the following:

  • Occasionally the podman image fails to build fully - i.e. errors are encountered in some of its configuration steps. This, however, may not stop the image from being created. As a result, the setup_synchweb_prod.bash script forces a full build rebuild each time (using the --no-cache option) - so rerunning may fix the problem. Keep an eye out for errors in the output, anyway.
  • One source of error in the above step is a failure to correctly download some of the required dependencies. This is usually down to network issues. For Diamond users, it is recommended that the sshuttle vpn set up is running.
  • Obtaining the DHL php libraries, via the composer install step is quite unreliable if run from the Dockerfile (due to rate limiting on anonymous requests). If problems are encountered, comment out this step and uncomment the equivalient in the entrypoint.bash file. Alternatively, connect with a personal access token (generated here) using composer config --global http-basic.github.com <USERNAME> <TOKEN>
  • Once running, the podman container can be accessed by using, podman exec -it synchweb-prod /bin/bash. From here, check the required php and httpd processes are running and check the logs under /var/log/httpd.
  • See here for more general advice.