Mono web development/testing environment using Windows, Ubuntu Server and VirtualBox
Development of web based .NET applications which runs on Mono under Linux can be done in various ways. I prefer using Visual Studio on Windows for application development and Ubuntu Server with Mono and Apache as a testing environment. This approach have advantages like system/platform separation and it still can be done on a single physical machine thanks to virtualization software like VirtualBox. Isolation of testing environment is crucial to avoid mess created by single system used for all scenarios. Virtualized Ubuntu Server in this example can be also used for simulating software updates/upgrades and deployment of web applications.
VirtualBox and guest OS
VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts. My host OS is Windows with VirtualBox 3.2.6 and Ubuntu Server 10.04 32-bit running as a guest OS. There are numerous tutorials and great user manual on how to set it up. Guest additions are required for mouse integration and shard folders (skip Configuring your Xorg/Xserver section).
OpenSSH and port forwarding for Ubuntu Server
Since I wasn’t able to get working copy/paste with installation of guest additions I prefer to use Putty on Windows host to access Ubuntu Server guest through SSH. What is needed on guest to enable this is OpenSSH:
apt-get install openssh-server
Now turn off the guest and get back to host OS and port forwarding. This is needed not only for SSH (port 22), but also for forwarding port on which will be running your future web application served by Apache web server on Ubuntu Server guest. I will choose port number 6870 which is unassigned. Commands below are inserted through command line on Windows in c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\ folder. Here is a working example:
VBoxManage setextradata "UbuntuServer" "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/guest22/HostPort" 22
VBoxManage setextradata "UbuntuServer" "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/guest22/GuestPort" 22
VBoxManage setextradata "UbuntuServer" "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/guest22/Protocol" TCP
VBoxManage setextradata "UbuntuServer" "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/guest6870/HostPort" 6870
VBoxManage setextradata "UbuntuServer" "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/guest6870/GuestPort" 6870
VBoxManage setextradata "UbuntuServer" "VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/guest6870/Protocol" TCP
Notice that in tutorial linked above are commands with pcnet instead of e1000. This is because I have Intel gigabit network inteface card so the configuration may vary. XML configuration file is located in c:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME.VirtualBox\Machines\YOUR_GUEST_NAME\ folder and can be manually changed. You should be able to access running guest OS now by connecting with Putty through SSH, for example root@127.0.0.1.
Apache and Mono installation
Ubuntu Server doesn’t come with Apache web server (unless you choose it during the installation process), so let’s install it:
apt-get install apache2
Now is the time to install Mono. I usually pick the latest daily tarball package of Mono and stable source of libgdiplus, xsp and mod_mono. Order in which these things are compiled is libgdiplus, mono, xsp and mod_mono. Here is slightly modified console procedure from this article:
cd /var/
mkdir src
cd /src/
apt-get install build-essential pkg-config libglib2.0-dev bison libcairo2-dev libungif4-dev libjpeg62-dev libtiff4-dev gettext apache2-threaded-dev
wget http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/sources/libgdiplus/libgdiplus-2.6.4.tar.bz2
wget http://mono.ximian.com/daily/mono-20100711.tar.bz2
wget http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/sources/xsp/xsp-2.6.4.tar.bz2
wget http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/sources/mod_mono/mod_mono-2.6.3.tar.bz2
tar -xvf libgdiplus-2.6.4.tar.bz2
tar -xvf mono-20100711.tar.bz2
tar -xvf xsp-2.6.4.tar.bz2
tar -xvf mod_mono-2.6.3.tar.bz2
cd libgdiplus-2.6.4
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
make install
Up to this point is compiled and installed only libgdiplus. Normally everything would follow up the article mentioned above, but there are some issues in the version of Mono and xsp which I used, so here is how they should be resolved:
cd ../mono-20100711
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-glib=system
make
make install
cd ../xsp-2.6.4
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
--with-glib=system in configuration prevents from this bug. If you try to compile xsp-2.6.4 now you will get cannot find metadata file 'Mono.Data.SqliteClient.dll' error during compilation process. In order to get rid of this issue search for this line in Makefile with some text editor (nano for example):
SUBDIRS = man src test tools scripts docs packaging unittests
Remove test from this line and finish the rest:
make
make install
cd ../mod_mono-2.6.3
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
make install
You can try to check if Mono is installed now by using this command:
mono --version
Apache and mod_mono configuration
Mod_mono is Apache module that provides ASP.NET (MVC 1 and 2) support. Create testing folder for your web application in /var/www/, give it a name test1 for example and assign permissions with chmod 777 /var/www/test1 command. Navigate to /etc/apache2/ directory and copy mod_mono.conf into /conf.d/ directory. Current default configuration should be located in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ within default file. Replace its content with the following configuration:
MonoAutoApplication disabled
<VirtualHost *:6870>
DocumentRoot /var/www/test1/
MonoServerPath default /usr/local/bin/mod-mono-server2
AddMonoApplications default "/:/var/www/test1"
<location />
MonoSetServerAlias default
SetHandler mono
</location>
<Directory /var/www/test1/>
Options Indexes
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Finally copy your ASP.NET (MVC) web application into /var/www/test1/, restart guest OS and you should be able to see your app running in browser on your host system when you access http://localhost:6870/.