13. Running WordPress & Database Containers on Portenta X8

Overview

The Arduino Portenta X8 is a powerful board that has many features that can be easily utilized with the help of Docker containers. In this tutorial, we will be using the Portenta X8 to host a web server and run WordPress using containers. This is a simple way to configure and run your own database server container and WordPress page. We can then access the WordPress site on the X8 through our web browser and begin setting it up.

Goals

• Create the file to install docker containers
• Install and run the containers
• Connect to the WordPress container running on the Portenta X8

Required Hardware and Software

• Arduino Portenta X8
• USB-C® cable (either USB-C® to USB-A or USB-C® to USB-C®)

Instructions

First, make sure your Portenta X8 is set up correctly by following the User Manual's Out-of-the-box experience.

Creating the Docker-compose.yml File

The WordPress container we use is a multi-container application, which also requires a database server container. The WordPress multi-container application uses Apache as its web server. This is required to make the service work and it is already included in the container, so it is nothing for us to worry about. We will be using MariaDB as our database server container. This container can run on the Portenta X8's architecture. All we need to start using these containers is to write a docker-compose.yml file. This file will contain information about what image we want to install and some important configuration information, such as the username for the database, password, timezone and database name. The same goes for the WordPress container: it will contain the password and username and we will also enter the database hostname and which container will be used as the database. We recommend that you change the default passwords to more secure ones by replacing the default ones that are stated in the file below.

The Complete Docker-compose.yml File

In this section, you can find the complete docker-compose.yml file that we will be using for this tutorial.

Copy
1version: "3.9"
2    
3services:
4  db:
5    image: mariadb:latest
6    container_name: mariadb
7    environment:
8      - PUID=1000
9      - PGID=1000
10      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=Wordpress
11      - TZ=Europe/London
12      - MYSQL_DATABASE=Wordpress
13      - MYSQL_USER=Wordpress
14      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=Wordpress
15    volumes:
16      - db_data:/var/lib/mysql
17    restart: unless-stopped
18    
19  Wordpress:
20    depends_on:
21      - db
22    image: Wordpress:latest
23    volumes:
24      - Wordpress_data:/var/www/html
25    ports:
26      - "8000:80"
27    restart: always
28    environment:
29      Wordpress_DB_HOST: db
30      Wordpress_DB_USER: Wordpress
31      Wordpress_DB_PASSWORD: Wordpress
32      Wordpress_DB_NAME: Wordpress
33volumes:
34  Wordpress_data: {}
35  db_data: {}

Now let's create a directory on our X8 and put this docker-compose.yml file on our device.

Installing The Containers

First, we create a directory where we want to add our docker-compose.yml file. Using the

mkdir

cd

cat > docker-compose.yml

ctrl C

adb push <path to docker-compose.yml file> /home/fio/wordpress-test

Before installing the containers, make sure that no other container is running on the ports that the WordPress container will use. You can check what containers are running and what port they are using by running the

docker ps -a

docker stop <container id>

docker rm <container id>

When you are in the correct directory and no other container is running on the ports that WordPress will use, you can now run

docker compose up -d

-d

-d

docker-compose logs -f

Connecting to the WordPress Site

To connect to the WordPress setup site, you simply need to access it with your Portenta X8s unique id and port. So for example:

http://portenta-x8-<uuid>.local:<port>

<uuid>

<port>

<uuid>

adb

http://192.168.7.1:8000

http://192.168.8.1:8000

When you connect, you should get some feedback in the terminal. Text will begin printing in the terminal, showing you information about the connection that has just been established as shown in the image below.

Now you should see a webpage, like the following image, in your browser.

You are now free to go through the WordPress setup process and configure it however you like.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we went through how to install and run a WordPress and database container on the Portenta X8. We then accessed the WordPress site on our X8 through our web browser. So now you can set up your own WordPress site on your X8 device and access it from another device.

Troubleshooting

• If the containers are not installing or running correctly, check if there are any other containers currently running on the same ports as the ones used by the WordPress container. You can check this with

  docker ps -a

  .
• If there is any issue running docker commands, make sure you are using

  sudo

  before the commands.
• If you cannot connect to the site when everything is running, you can double-check the X8s IP address. Run the command

  ip s a

  in the adb shell. This will display the X8's IP address via USB and WiFi. Try connecting via those IP addresses if all the rest fails.