/rails-nginx-passenger-ubuntu

Instructions on how to get up and running with nginx and passenger on Ubuntu 8.04 server

rails-nginx-passenger-ubuntu

My notes on setting up a simple production server with ubuntu, nginx, passenger and mysql for rails.

Aliases

echo "alias ll='ls -l'" >> ~/.bash_aliases

edit .bashrc and uncomment the loading of .bash_aliases

If you have trouble with PATH that changes when doing sudo, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/257616/sudo-changes-path-why then add the following line to the same file

echo "alias sudo='sudo env PATH=$PATH'" >> ~/.bash_aliases

Update and upgrade the system

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Configure timezone

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
sudo apt-get install ntp
sudo ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com # Update time

Verify that you have to correct date and time with

date

Configure hostname

sudo hostname your-hostname

Add 127.0.0.1 your-hostname

sudo vim /etc/hosts

Write your-hostname in

sudo vim /etc/hostname

Verify that hostname is set

hostname

Install mysql

This should be installed before Ruby Enterprise Edition becouse that will install the mysql gem.

sudo apt-get install mysql-server libmysqlclient15-dev

Gemrc

Add the following lines to ~/.gemrc, this will speed up gem installation and prevent rdoc and ri from being generated, this is not nessesary in the production environment.

---
:sources:
- http://gems.rubyforge.org
- http://gems.github.com
gem: --no-ri --no-rdoc

Ruby Enterprise Edition

Check for newer version at http://www.rubyenterpriseedition.com/download.html

Install package required by ruby enterprise, C compiler, Zlib development headers, OpenSSL development headers, GNU Readline development headers

sudo apt-get install build-essential zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libreadline5-dev

Download and install Ruby Enterprise Edition

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/66162/ruby-enterprise-X.X.X-ZZZZ.ZZ.tar.gz
tar xvfz ruby-enterprise-X.X.X-ZZZZ.ZZ.tar.gz 
rm ruby-enterprise-X.X.X-ZZZZ.ZZ.tar.gz 
cd ruby-enterprise-X.X.X-ZZZZ.ZZ/
sudo ./installer

Change target folder to /opt/ruby for easier upgrade later on

Add Ruby Enterprise bin to PATH

echo "export PATH=/opt/ruby/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.profile && . ~/.profile

Verify the ruby installation

ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [x86_64-linux], MBARI 0x6770, Ruby Enterprise Edition 20090928

Installing git

sudo apt-get install git-core

Nginx

sudo /opt/ruby/bin/passenger-install-nginx-module

Select option 1. Yes: download, compile and install Nginx for me. (recommended)

When finished, verify nginx source code is located under /tmp

$ ll /tmp/
drwxr-xr-x 8 deploy deploy    4096 2009-04-18 17:48 nginx-0.6.36
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root    528425 2009-04-02 08:49 nginx-0.6.36.tar.gz
drwxrwxrwx 7   1169   1169    4096 2009-04-18 17:56 pcre-7.8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root   1168513 2009-04-18 17:51 pcre-7.8.tar.gz

Run the passenger-install-nginx-module once more if you want to add --with-http_ssl_module

$ sudo /opt/ruby/bin/passenger-install-nginx-module

Select option 2. No: I want to customize my Nginx installation. (for advanced users)

When installation script ask, "Where is your Nginx source code located?" Enter:

/tmp/nginx-0.6.36

On, extra arguments to pass to configure script add

 --with-http_ssl_module

Nginx init script

More information on http://wiki.nginx.org/Nginx-init-ubuntu

cd
git clone git://github.com/jnstq/rails-nginx-passenger-ubuntu.git
sudo mv rails-nginx-passenger-ubuntu/nginx/nginx /etc/init.d/nginx
sudo chown root:root /etc/init.d/nginx

Verify that you can start and stop nginx with init script

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

  * Starting Nginx Server...
  ...done.

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx status

  nginx found running with processes:  11511 11510

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx stop

  * Stopping Nginx Server...
  ...done.

sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults

If you want, reboot and see so the webserver is starting as it should.

Installning ImageMagick and RMagick

If you want to install the latest version of ImageMagick. I used MiniMagick that shell-out to the mogrify command, worked really well for me.

# If you already installed imagemagick from apt-get
sudo apt-get remove imagemagick

sudo apt-get install libperl-dev gcc libjpeg62-dev libbz2-dev libtiff4-dev libwmf-dev libz-dev libpng12-dev libx11-dev libxt-dev libxext-dev libxml2-dev libfreetype6-dev liblcms1-dev libexif-dev perl libjasper-dev libltdl3-dev graphviz gs-gpl pkg-config

Use wget to grab the source from ImageMagick.org.

Once the source is downloaded, uncompress it:

tar xvfz ImageMagick.tar.gz

Now configure and make:

cd ImageMagick-6.5.0-0
./configure
make
sudo make install

To avoid an error such as:

convert: error while loading shared libraries: libMagickCore.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

sudo ldconfig

Install RMagick

sudo /opt/ruby/bin/ruby /opt/ruby/bin/gem install rmagick

Test a rails applicaton with nginx

rails -d mysql testapp
cd testapp

Enter your mysql password

vim database.yml
rake db:create:all
ruby script/generate scaffold post title:string body:text
rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production

Check so the rails app start as normal

ruby script/server

sudo vim /opt/nginx/conf/nginx.conf

Add a new virutal host

server {
    listen 80;
    # server_name www.mycook.com;
    root /home/deploy/testapp/public;
    passenger_enabled on;
}

Restart nginx

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Check you ipaddress and see if you can acess the rails application