sketches, thoughts, programming, an art-log, a web-log

I serve small bits of things for development purposes from my home. The work is done by an older Dell box I had lying around, on which I’ve installed Ubuntu and Apache. Specifically, the machine runs Ubuntu GNU/Linux 9.10, Apache 2.2.12 and the free Dropbox synchronization client. Just a disclaimer: this is not a production environment setup by any means: I run it entirely as a matter of convenience; I only use it to do test development and sometimes SSH into it as a last resort comfort-environment when there’s nothing better around (ahem.. my school is owned by Microsoft deals).

What’s Dropbox?

Dropbox is an excellent and free file synchronization service that works via a desktop client which runs in the background. Dropbox’s job is to synchronize my files, this means that in some folder on my computer (ie. my “~/Dropbox” folder) everything that happens is being synchronized with an on-line account, then reflected in all my other machine’s that have Dropbox client installed with the same account.

Dropbox Convenicences to the Rescue

Often I find myself working on files in my webroot, but wish I could be doing the work on a faster/different machine, like my laptop (also running GNU/Linux with its own instance of Apache for playtime). I could move the files I’ve been working on to my fast laptop. However, what if I want to move them back? This can get a bit silly, which is why synchronization is perfect.This is when Dropbox comes in: easy to use and reliable. I simply make sure all machines I develop with have been put through the following:

• Dropbox client has been installed, running with my same Dropbox account.
• Serve respective Apache DocumentRoots out of a designated location in my Dropbox file hierarchy (eg. ~/Dropbox/www)

Now every-time I edit my development file in one machine, all my development machines hold the latest copy of my developments and can readily serve them. This is only one example of Dropbox’s awesome-ness, its really very open-ended as far as possibilities. For example, I just recently made a bin directory in ~/Dropbox/nix/bin, now I simply symlink all my linux machines like so: ln -s ~/Dropbox/nix/bin ~/bin This means that my, hopefully portable, scripts will get put to good work no matter where I am, in my ~/bin.

The Gold: Modifying Apache’s DocumentRoot

If you haven’t changed your DocumentRoot yet, then most likely you have a default DocumentRoot located at /var/www. To change this default location, or to change from any location, I usually do the following hack to edit any Apache config files, found guilty of mentioning the current ‘var/www:

Apache’s DocumentRoot, from /var/www to /home/me/Dropbox/www

• 
#find the files mentioning the current document root:
$ grep -ir 'var/www' /etc/apache2/*
/etc/apache2/apache2.conf:
/etc/apache2/sites-available/default: DocumentRoot /var/www
/etc/apache2/sites-available/default:
/etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl: DocumentRoot /var/www
/etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl:
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default: DocumentRoot /var/www
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:

• 
#a quick backup of all the above files
(as you see fit, however you usually do backups)

• 
#now a quick edit of each of the above ^ found files
vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apach2/sites-availbale/default-ssl /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

• 
#from inside vi, run a substitution with sed, like so:
1,$ s/var\/www/\/home\/me\/Dropbox\/www/g


Let Apache Know

Finally, restart Apache, well reloading Apache’s config is all that’s necessary, but for my purposes (and because below is all I bother memorizing) the below will do:
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Presto! Your files are being served properly and out of a place you can be sure they’re shared with all your Apache instances (eg.: home laptop, other development laptops, that netbook you use, etc.)!

Anyone done this with Ubuntu One instead? I have yet to really try out Ubuntu One.