A Lightweight NodeJS, ExpressJS and MongoDB Dev Machine using Vagrant (that also works in Windows)

This is a Vagrant project that will create a barebones Ubuntu 14.04 x64 virtual machine with NodeJS, ExpressJS and MongoDB installed. Provisioning will be done using chef-solo and the vagrant-librarian plugin.

Developed using a Windows 8.1 x64 Professional host machine

Prerequisites

• Vagrant >= 1.6.3
• Vagrant-Librarian-Chef-Nochef
• Virtualbox >= 4.3

Installation

On your workstation ...

1. Download and install Vagrant
2. Download and install Virtualbox.
3. Install the Vagrant-Librarian-Chef-Nochef plugin

• $: vagrant plugin install vagrant-librarian-chef-nochef

Launch, Login and Verify

	$: vagrant up
	$: vagrant ssh
	$: node -v
	$: mongo --version
	$: express -V

If node -v, express -V and mongo --version return with version numbers then you're done! You should be ready to rock.

Setting up your ExpressJS App

If you already have source files, you can put it in the app folder. Login to your Vagrant environment using vagrant ssh then run ...

	$: cd /home/vagrant
	$: express app 			# skip this step if you already have your source
	$: cd app 
	$: sudo npm install --no-bin-links
	$: npm start

Open up your browser and go to http://localhost:3000 and you should see the Express welcome page.

You will want to edit the package.json file and add an entry for the MongoDB driver you intend to use. Be sure to re-run sudo npm install --no-bin-links again once you've added it in.

The --no-bin-links flag is used to get around the issue of symlinking in shared folders with Virtualbox.

Troubleshooting in Windows

If you run into an error along the lines of "fileutils unlink: permission denied", it might be because you commented out the provisioning section in the Vagrantfile and ran a vagrant provision. This causes all sorts of problems with the vagrant-librarian-chef-nochef plugin.

Steps to recover:

1. destroy your vagrant environment
2. delete the cookbooks, tmp, and Cheffile.lock files
3. run vagrant up