Pre-existing MySQL data with Vagrant / VirtualBox

Question

Background: I used to develop using MAMP and over the months/years I've accumulated a large mysql database (a few gigs) that I use for development for my different projects. I finally got around to setting up a VM using Vagrant and I've gotten everything set up and working nicely except my database. I'm running a CentOS 6.5 guest box on an OSX host.

My problem: I need my database to be completely persistent so I can vagrant up/destroy as many boxes as I need to, but the mysql persists.

My solution #1: I initially mounted a synced folder using vboxsf. This works pretty well and seems to be my best option so far, but performance is pretty bad. Query-intensive pages on my dev sites take 1-3 seconds to load whereas they might normally take under a second to load.

My solution #2: I then tried mounting a synced folder using nfs because the performance should be much better. The issue here is that mysql complains b/c, given the nature of nfs, it can't chown the data directory to the mysql:mysql user. I get the following errors when trying to start up the mysqld service:

chown: changing ownership of '/www/mysql': Operation not permitted

chmod: changing permissions of '/www/mysql': Permission denied

Sooo, my question is: are there any better ways to accomplish what I need? I feel like NFS would be the best solution, but I don't know how to get around the whole ownership/permission issues automatically with Vagrant. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

First of all, let me start with saying this is not best practice. You may know yourself that this can lead to problems if e.g. your PC goes blank or you want to give one project to another person for development. Of course, especially as a one-person-endevour, there are more important things than having test data importers and stuff :) So let's look for solutions.

NFS Permissions

To get NFS permissions right, your users need to have the same UID and GUID on host and guest. It's pretty tricky to setup and you should not change it from the guest. Maybe you can change it on the host to make it writeable to mysql and make UID and GUID the same. Of course, the moment the host changes this won't work anymore.

rsync shared folder

Rsync might not be the fastest in terms of syncing, but if you create on rsync shared folder where only MySQL is writing and which syncs back to some folder on your host this might be a solution. The "real" projects could still live inside a virtualbox share or nfs and you don't need to bother with correct permissions.

There might be some other solutions as well:

Create a backup/restore strategy

One way to go would be to backup MySQL inside your vagrant box at various points, e.g. every day. You could also run the backup when the box is shut down, thus creating a backup right before you destroy the box. Placing this backup at a shared folder, you'd have up-to-date data in case you destroy a box. Performance should be pretty good as the data MySQL is using wouldn't be on a shared folder.

Run MySQL on host or other vagrant box

It's of course possible to connect from within your vagrant box to your host or another vagrant box which runs MySQL. Your host or this box could be long-lived and could serve as a central "MySQL Server" for all your projects.

Have a MySQL slave running on the same machine which writes to shared folder

I believe with MySQL a master/slave combination is possible. Running both on one machine with the master (which you use in your projects) living inside your vm and not writing anything to a shared folder and a slave which writes to your shared folder and is a mirror of your master. This would mean that you have high performance and a few secs of delay between writing something and having it written to your shared folder. Of course, keeping this setup running and making sure it works all the time can be tricky.

Answer 2

I had the same issue or requirement for my local dev on Mac. And I found a solution for a MySQL-only Vagrant box with external data linked as folder_sync. But it'll run on Win too I guess. Here is the Vagrant box config: https://github.com/ronnyhartenstein/vagrant-mysql-shared-folder

And if you understand German, here is my blog article with some background infos and tests (and fails of course): http://blog.rh-flow.de/2014/11/11/es-hat-sich-ausgemampft-vagrant-ist/

Answer 3

You can use bindfs for changing the user/group of a share. I'm actually using a plugin called vagrant-bindfs which let's you remount a share with different ownerships. It works, but i haven't tried it with mysql to see how it performs.

Relevant lines on my Vagrantfile:

unless Vagrant.has_plugin?("vagrant-bindfs")
  raise 'vagrant-bindfs is not installed! Please install with vagrant plugin install vagrant-bindfs'
end

config.vm.synced_folder "../", "/temp-nfs-mounts/sites-unbinded", type: :nfs
config.bindfs.bind_folder "/temp-nfs-mounts/sites-unbinded", "/sites", :force_user  => "vagrant", :force_group => "vagrant", :create_as_user => true