How to mount VMware Shares on Turnkey Linux (Debian) and use it as Apache2 Document Root

Hello everyone again. After struggling to find a perfect LAMP environment for WebDev and tried so many different things I decided to give a try on the Turnkey Linux because of its small footprint and easy deployability (just invented that I word guess).

That been said and not considering myself a Linux expert at all. I was able to successful deploy TurnKey Linux LAMP 13.0 box on a VMware workstation 11. Upgrade the Webmin to the latest version at this time (v1.760). Install the latest VMware Tools available and finally mount shared folders. I will try to post later a tut on how I got everything working. But on this post I will  focus on the topic. How to mount shared folders on the guest system AND use it as Apache2 Document Root.

I will assume the following considerations;

1. You have install VMware workstation or Player 10, 11 or 12
2. You have already installed VMware tools and it's tested to be working
3. and you already have configured at least one shared folder in your VM settings.
   

Our Goal is to share C:\www on Windows 7 host and mount it at bot time under /mnt/www on our guest Turnkey Linux.

Let's start!   We will edit the following file with nano...

...and add the following line to mount ALL shared folders under /mnt on our guest at boot time;

SAVE, EXIT and RESTART VM Tools  ->  service open-vm-tools restart
RESTART Apache -> service apache2 restart

And at this point you should be able to list the folder and files under /mnt.

You still won't be able to browse to your website yet! We will have to now do the changes to make our folder available for Apache so we can navigate to it...

Lest's copy the default contents of /var/www to our new /mnt/www;

cp -R /var/www/* /mnt/www

We need to edit the following file and change anything from /var/www to our new document root /mnt/www

Now we edit the php5.conf file and make the following changes to it;

Note: The files above can also be edited through Webmin interface as follows;

At this point you should be able to go to http:/// and you should see;

Note: Also any website under the root should work like http:///website1

That's it! From now on, every time you restart your box the shared folders will be mounted under /mnt.

Have fun! :-)

If you have any question please don't hesitate to drop a msg.

1.760

I am back!

Hello everyone! I am back! It has been a while and with so many great tutorials out there (Google) now a days I feel that writing repetitive stuff is not worth it. So I took a break from this blog. I has some other stuff going on.
Lately I've been on the IT world dealing with different challenges on a daily basis and sometimes you cannot find the right solution.
Finding a solution is like a puzzle. I take bits and peaces of different places and put them together and find a solution.
And this is what I will be doing on this blog from now on. I will not post stuff regularly but rather sporadically when I really feel like I can't find a solution for something nowhere else.

If any of you out there need help with whatever on the IT world I will be glad to try to help with my expertise's. Don't hesitate to drop a msg.

Soon I will be changing the look and feel of this blog to a more modern look.

Stay tune! ;-)

Tips: Favorites & FlashFolder

One of the annoying things about Windows 7 is that it does not currently run many of my favorite utilities. Perhaps in time it will. Consequently, I still spend a lot of time using Windows XP. One of the utilities I miss when using Windows 7 is FlashFolder. FlashFolder puts a small toolbar on top of open/save dialog windows which allows me to quickly navigate to my desired folders/directories.

The FlashFolder toolbar has drop down menus which show me 1) a history of folders I went to recently in the open/save window, 2) folders that I’ve added as my favorites, and 3) folders I currently have open in Windows Explorer, i.e. the directories/folders I have open on the desktop.

The standard Favorites menu on the Windows XP Explorer menu bar is useful for storing favorite folders and files, but it is not accessible in most open/save dialog windows. Consequently, we often must navigate through a maze of folders when we need to open or save a file.

One thing about the Favorites menu that annoys me is that Internet Explorer will sometimes store its favorites/bookmarks on it, which I then have to manually remove.



Windows 7 does not have an Explorer window Favorites menu like Windows XP. Instead, it has a Favorites directory on its new Explorer window sidebar. You can simply drag and drop your favorite folders and files there, similar to how the Macintosh Finder sidebar works. In addition, Windows 7 allows you access those favorites from many (albeit not all) open/save dialog windows. There is also Recent Places item on the Win 7 Favorites sidebar directory that shows some folder history, but it doesn’t store currently open desktop windows, as FlashFolder does. I often use the current folders option of FlashFolder when I’m in an application to open files I recently found in my folders.