Quick Grandstack Starter howto build via docker on a PhotonOS VM

Ok - I think it's time I stop overwhelming my poor colleagues with Cypher queries they have to paste into the browser... It's time to deliver an app. And I really need to get some hands-on time before attending GraphConnect 2020!

I was pretty new to docker, and hopefully this mini-guide can help someone else get this up and running in no time flat:

If you have a place to run a virtual machine, that's all you need to complete the rest of this. I decided on Photon-OS (running on ESXi) for the docker host VM

  1. Download photon ova from here
    Install ova to a VM
    Add vCPU (I changed to 2 vCPU)
    Memory (I upped it to 8GB)
    Disk (I expanded to 50GB)
    Boot & change root password (default is changeme)

  2. Install some basic (and pre-req) tools on Photon-OS from the shell:

tdnf install wget -y
tdnf install git -y
tdnf install parted -y
tdnf install unzip -y
tdnf update -y
  1. If you want to "see" that extra drive-space, you have to expand the partition (the ova was configured for a pretty small virtual disk)
echo 1 > /sys/class/block/sda/device/rescan
parted /dev/sda
(parted) resizepart 2 100%
(parted) quit
resize2fs /dev/sda2
  1. Photon-OS comes with docker, but we also need docker-compose
curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
#Apply executable permissions to the binary
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

# Now REBOOT the VM (we need those updates to apply before finishing the docker config)
shutdown -r now

# Wait for reboot, then log back into the shell

# Start Docker and enable it
systemctl start docker
systemctl enable docker
  1. Finally, download & install the latest grand-stack-starter from the git repo
cd /home
wget https://github.com/grand-stack/grand-stack-starter/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd grand-stack-starter-master
#now edit the api/.env according to the readme before you start the container up
docker-compose up -d

At this point you should have a photon-os VM running docker & docker-compose with the grand-stack-starter ready to go!

Hope this helps someone get started - and appreciate any feedback or edits to the above instructions!

Ok - so this does launch, and I can hit the neo4j browser at :7474... but the GraphQL UI won't open when browsing to http://ip-address-of-vm:4000

This is probably a docker config issue, so if anyone can lend a hand I'd appreciate it...

I got if figured out... the readme for docker-composer led me astray... the default config worked better... I'll get the specifics figured out and update the instructions..

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