Scotch Box

Check out the official docs at: box.scotch.io

Read the article at scotch.io

Scotch Box4dev tl;dr

New in Scotch Box4dev:

• Simple shell provisioning, for quick upgrades of the box.
• Added section in Vagrant file with memory settings and CPU numbers.
• Added Xdebug with idekey for PHPSTORM.
• Added XMLRPC for your XML pleasures.
• Added Midnight Commander, because it's awesome.
• Added Java because ES requires it.
• Added Elasticsearch 0.90.13 because I need it for development. It is easy to change it to the newest version.
• Changed default web application folder from public to app.

Scotch Box is a preconfigured Vagrant Box with a full array of LAMP Stack features to get you up and running with Vagrant in no time.

A lot of PHP websites and applications don’t require much server configuration or overhead at first. This box should have all your needs for doing basic development so you don’t have to worry about configuring Vagrant and you can simply focus on your code.

No provisioning tools or setup is really even required with Scotch Box. Since everything is packaged into the box, running “vagrant” is super fast, you’ll never have to worry about your environment breaking with updates, and you won’t need Internet to code.

What and Why

Vagrant is an extremely powerful tool. With Chef or Puppet and Vagrant, you can configure any type of server environment you can think of. The possibilities are endless (especially with Docker in the picture now, too). Speaking candidly though, most the development I do doesn't really stray from a default LAMP stack, and when I have to configure a server, I really am always just setting up a boring typical LAMP stack anyways. All I really want is PHP 5.4+ and a bunch of modules with zero hassle or overhead.

I used to use this seriously awesome Vagrant LAMP Stack that I even wrote about here. The problem with this is it broke a lot. It broke when Vagrant updated, it broke when Chef updated, and it broke when Berkshelf updated. On top of that, I always had problems getting it working on Windows. There are just too many points of failures for what it's purpose was for me - simply just developing locally.

So that's why I decided to build a Vagrant LAMP Box. The box is prepackaged and requires provisioning and no configuration. You simply boot it up and it just works. It's not for every project, but it sure will help you get straight to it with a lot of them.

Are you new to Vagrant? If your new to Vagrant, check out our getting started guide with Vagrant article, our Vagrant Share article, and our article on Larvel’s Vagrant stack Homestead. If you follow the first tutorial, you can just learn the Vagrant commands but use the Scotch Box instead.

Features

Useful Stuff

• PHP 5.5
• No Internet connection required
• PHP errors turned on
• Laravel and WordPress ready (and others)
• Operating System agnostic
• Goodbye XAMPP / WAMP
• New Vagrant version? Update worry free. ScotchBox is very reliable with a lesser chance of breaking with various updates
• Bootstrap and jQuery are saved in the server's home folder in case you don't have Internet (usually planes, trains or cars)
• Chef and Puppet ready in case you want to add extra features on Vagrant Up
• Super easy database access and control MIT License

Server Stuff

• Apache
• Vim
• MySQL
• PHP 5.5
• Git
• Screen
• Composer
• cURL
• GD and Imagick
• Mcrypt
• Memcache and Memcached

Front End Stuff

• NPM
• Grunt
• Bower
• Yeoman
• Gulp

Get Started

• Download and Install Vagrant
• Download and Install VirtualBox
• Clone the Scotch Box GitHub Repository
• Run Vagrant Up
• Access Your Project at http://192.168.33.10/

Basic Vagrant Commands

Start or resume your server

vagrant up

Pause your server

vagrant suspend

Delete your server

vagrant destroy

SSH into your server

vagrant ssh

Database Access

Key	Value
Database Name	scotchbox
Database User	root
Database Password	root
Database Host	localhost / 127.0.0.1
SSH Host	192.168.33.10
SSH User	vagrant
SSH Password	vagrant

Updating the Box

Although not necessary, if you want to check for updates, just type:

vagrant box outdated

It will tell you if you are running the latest version or not of the box. If it says you aren't, simply run:

vagrant box update

Setting a Hostname

If you're like me, you prefer to develop at a domain name versus an IP address. If you want to get rid of the some-what ugly IP address, just add a record like the following example to your laptop's host file.

192.168.33.10 whatever-i-want.local

Or if you want "www" to work as well, do:

192.168.33.10 whatever-i-want.local www.whatever-i-want.local

Technically you could also a Vagrant Plugin like Vagrant Hostmanager to automatically update your host file when you run Vagrant Up. However, the purpose of Scotch Box is to have as little dependencies as possible so that it's always working when you run "vagrant up".

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2014-2015 Nicholas Cerminara, scotch.io, LLC

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.