nhsl-ubuntu-php

A Docker image for NHS Leadership Academy based on Ubuntu Bionic.

This provides Nginx, PHP, and an array of commonly used tools. It aims to be an image capable of running production environments whilst still being easy to work with.

Building

This image needs some Docker --build-arg statements to be able to build successfully.

Argument	Values	Comments
PHPV	7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4	Specify the PHP version you require

For example, if you wish to build an Nginx image running PHP 7.3 you would use: docker build -t nhsleadershipacademy/nhsl-ubuntu-php:nginx-7.3 --build-arg --build-arg PHPV=7.3 -f Dockerfile .

It is likely this will only work for currently supported versions of PHP as unsupported ones are removed from the repository used in this image.

The image is based on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic, which is an LTS (Long Term Support) release. This means it has full support from Canonical until April 2023.

Using this image

This image has been heavily customised to fit the needs of the NHS Leadership Academy. We have large amounts of sites running Moodle and WordPress and as such there is specific configuration included in this image for these CMSs. This is not to say it cannot be used for other software, it is simply included to make our lives easier.

When running the image, you will need to specify some environment variables for the image it self.

Variable	Value	Comment
HEADER_NOSNIFF	true/false	Default: TRUE Enables or disables strict mime type checking in the browser
OSSAPP	MOODLE/WORDPRESS/OTHER	Default: OTHER if set then will include customisations for running Moodle or WordPress (e.g. PHP config in Nginx)
CONTAINERROLE	web/worker	Default: WEB Sets up the container for either serving content or running cron jobs (worker).
PHP_MEMORY_MAX	Any integer ending M, e.g. 128M	Default: 128M Sets the PHP Max Memory in Mb for executing scripts.
DISABLE_OPCACHE	true/false	Default: TRUE Enables or disables the PHP opcache.
PHP_OPCACHE_MEMORY	An integer	Default: 16 Set the amount of Mb to use for opcache memory storage.
PHP_SESSION_STORE	REDIS	If set to REDIS PHP will store session files there rather than on the local disk.
ATATUS_APM_LICENSE_KEY	A string containing the license key	If a license key is set, then Atatus will be enabled.
NGINX_WEB_ROOT	A path to the web root, e.g. /src/wordpress	Set the Nginx public web root.
NGINX_PORT	An integer	Default: 80 If set, changes the Nginx port.
OLD_DOMAINS	Comma delimited string	If set, will setup Nginx to redirect these domains to the $DOMAIN set by Bamboo.

Things to note when moving from previous images

1. You may need to remove the command: ["/start-worker.sh"] line from your deployment.k8s file

2. You will need to add a new environment variable to your worker container in deployment.k8s:

   - name: CONTAINERROLE
     value: worker
   

3. Nginx and PHP both run as the nobody user under the nogroup group. This may not need any changes but if you find you have permissions issues, change the group from nobody to nogroup in any chown statements you run.

4. Your cron should output to /var/log/cronlog and specify a user to run as that isn't root, for example:

   /etc/cron.d/moodle:

   * * * * * nobody /src/vendor/public/public/moodle/admin/cli/cron.php > /var/log/cronlog
   

Nginx config overwriting

Modifying Nginx configuration is highly discouraged but sometimes not avoidable. If you really must overwrite the Nginx configuration then please copy it into /startup-nginx.conf inside the container. A script runs during container boot that will look for this file and overwrite Nginx's default configuration if needed.

Please note that doing this will stop OSSAPP and any NGINX_ or HEADER_ options above from working.

Boot scripting

You may add scripts that run as the container boots, but before Nginx and PHP start by copying files into:

/startup-all.sh - scripts that run on both web and worker containers

/startup-web.sh - scripts that only run on a 'web' container

/startup-worker.sh - scripts that only run on 'worker' containers, generally used for cron jobs