Introducing Scotch Box – A Vagrant LAMP Stack That Just Works

Just a dead-simple local LAMP stack for developers.

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.

Features

Get Started

Getting started with Scotch Box is a breeze. We'll cover everything, but chances are you've probably already done some of these things.

Download and Install Vagrant

Just click here and follow their steps.

Download and Install VirtualBox

Follow this link and install Virtual Box

Clone the Scotch Box GitHub Repository

From the command line, you'll want to do this inside the folder where you want your project to be on your computer.

git clone https://github.com/scotch-io/scotch-box.git my-project

Run Vagrant Up

Start the box! If this is your first time, the box will need to download. After that, everything should be ultra-fast to start.

vagrant up

Access Your Project

Success! You can now access your project by visiting http://192.168.33.10/. There's a nice little landing page to let you know it's working too.

Basic Vagrant Commands

This is how you can control your server from the command line.

 // Pause your server
vagrant suspend

// Start or resume your server
vagrant up

// Delete your server
vagrant destroy

// SSH into your server
vagrant ssh

Database Access

From your application

These are the settings that work when connecting with PHP. You could technically create as many databases as you want.

$connection = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'root', 'root', 'scotchbox');

From a Desktop Client

You'll need to download either Sequel Pro or Navicat or some other desktop database client. Switching to one of these from phpMyAdmin will be a life changing experience so just do it already. After this, create a "new connection" and select SSH Forwarding and enter these parameters:

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 updated

Follow us on GitHub and Twitter for the latest updates to Scotch Box.

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.

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