RaspberryPi2

DreamFactory can be installed and configured on Raspberry Pi 2 as an open source IoT gateway.

Since DreamFactory relies on PHP and Laravel frameworks, the existing Raspbian distribution needs to be upgraded from Wheezy to Jessie. The upgrade process involves some manual work, including updating the package sources for Jessie and building PHP 5.6 from the sources. Ubuntu Mate is a stable, easy-to-use Debian distribution that can run on Raspberry Pi 2. Since it comes with PHP 5.6, it is easy to install all the required dependencies through simple apt-get install commands.

Here is a step-by-step guide to install DreamFactory on Raspberry Pi 2.

Install Ubuntu Mate on Raspberry Pi 2

Follow the same procedure as setting up Raspbian for installing Ubuntu Mate on Raspberry Pi 2. Download the image, uncompress it, and write it to a SD card. You can take the help of Pi Filler to burn the .img file to the SD card. Boot Raspberry Pi with the SD card and follow the on-screen instructions. Make sure that the operating system is successfully installed.

Pi Filler prompting to insert the SD card

Ubuntu Mate Desktop on Raspberry Pi 2

Install Apache, MySQL, and PHP

• Open the terminal window and run the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get install –y curl apache2 php5 php5-common php5-cli php5-curl php5-json 
mcrypt php5-mcrypt php5-gd php5-mysqlnd mysql-server mysql-client git

You may be prompted to enter the password for MySQL root user.

• Once that's done, open Firefox in Ubuntu Mate Desktop and visit http://localhost to confirm the installation of Apache. You should see the default Apache2 Ubuntu page.

Install phpMyAdmin

Note:phpMyAdmin will be a handy tool that we can use later. Installing it will confirm that the LAMP stack is properly configured. You can setup phpMyAdmin with just one command:

$ sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Set up the DreamFactory database in MySQL

Note:DreamFactory expects a database to be in place during the installation. Run the following commands to set up the database in MySQL:

$  mysql -u root –p

• Within the MySQL environment, run the following SQL commands:

mysql> create database dreamfactory;
mysql> grant all privileges on dreamfactory.* to df_admin'@'localhost' identified by df_admin';
mysql> quit

• Clone DreamFactory repo

With all the prerequisites in place, you're now ready to set up DreamFactory. Run the below commands to clone the GitHub repo.

$ cd /opt
$ git clone https://github.com/dreamfactorysoftware/dreamfactory.git
$ cd dreamfactory
$ cp .env-dist .env

We need to point the DreamFactory environment variables to the MySQL database. To do this, we copied the .env-dist file .env. If you created a user with a different name than df_admin, you need to update the database settings section of the .env file. Otherwise, you need not make any changes to the file.

The directory needs appropriate permissions to function properly. Run the following commands to configure them:

$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/dreamfactory/
$ sudo chmod -R 777 /opt/dreamfactory/storage/
$ sudo chmod -R 777 /opt/dreamfactory/bootstrap/cache

Install Composer

DreamFactory uses Composer to manage dependencies. Let’s go ahead and install it.

$ cd /opt/dreamfactory
$ sudo curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer| php
$ sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

With Composer in place, it’s time for us to run the update tool.

$ cd /opt/dreamfactory
$ sudo composer update

This will take about 10 minutes to download and configure all the dependencies required by DreamFactory. Before moving to the next step, make sure that Composer is not reporting any errors.

Configure Apache 2 to Run DreamFactory

There are only a few more steps before we can launch DreamFactory. We need to register the site with Apache, update the ServerName variable, and finalize the configuration.

$ sudo cp /opt/dreamfactory/server/config/apache/etc/apache2/sites-available/dsp.local.conf  /etc/apache2/sites-available/dreamfactory.conf

• Edit the dreamfactory.conf file and update the ServerName with the local IP address of Raspberry Pi 2. Replace the DocumentRoot and Directory entries with the actual location of DreamFactory - /opt/dreamfactory/public. Your configuration file should look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        ServerName <RPi2_IP_ADDRESS>

        DocumentRoot "/opt/dreamfactory/public"

        <Directory "/opt/dreamfactory/public">
                Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
        </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/dsp.error.log

        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg.
        LogLevel info

        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/dsp.access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

• Run the commands below to finalize the installation process. The final step is to restart Apache.

$ sudo a2ensite
$ sudo a2enmod rewrite 
$ sudo php5enmod mcrypt
$ sudo service apache2 restart

Test the DreamFactory installation by typing the IP address of Raspberry Pi 2.0. After a brief wait of a few seconds, which is required for the first run of DreamFactory, you should see the sign up screen.