Laurent’s Weblog

I begin here a serie of articles about Installing Rails stack on several platforms, for different purposes (development, production). I will continue with the detail of a current RoR application we just launched here, by my client, then how to deploy it on the production server using Capistrano 2, and how to configure Apache 2 to make it run with FastCGI.

The RoR application is developed on our Linux desktops, is hosted on the remote “low cost” Subversion server (BeansTalkApp), the application is deployed with Capistrano 2 to a Linux Debian virtualized server into the DMZ and is running on Apache 2 + FastCGI.

First , i begin with an install of Ruby, Rails, mySQL, Lighttpd done on my desktop running on Linux Fedora Core 7.

On Fedora, as you had on RedHat with RPMs ( and as you have on Debian with Aptitude), you can use the package manager called ‘yum’. Here are the steps to follow to get a functional RoR stack ready.

Install Ruby:

Launch the command in a terminal window (we’re connected as root):

$ yum install ruby ruby-devel ruby-libs irb rdoc

Installed: ruby-devel.i386 0:1.8.6.114-1.fc7 ruby-devel.x86_64
0:1.8.6.114-1.fc7 ruby-rdoc.x86_64 0:1.8.6.114-1.fc7
Dependency Installed: ruby.x86_64 0:1.8.6.114-1.fc7 ruby-irb.x86_64
0:1.8.6.114-1.fc7 ruby-libs.i386 0:1.8.6.114-1.fc7 ruby-libs.x86_64
0:1.8.6.114-1.fc7

Install RubyGems

$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/35283/rubygems-1.1.1.tgz
$ tar xzvf rubygems
$ cd rubygems-1.1.1
$ ruby setup.rb

$ cd ..

$ rm rubygem* -drf

Install Rails

We first install the 1.2.3 release of Rails , because of one of our server, running Rails app in version 1.2.3

$ gem install rails -v 1.2.3 –include-dependencies

Update to Rails 2.x
$ gem update rails –include-dependencies

Install lighttpd

$ yum install lighttpd lighttpd-fastcgi

Install FastCGI:

$ wget http://www.fastcgi.com/dist/fcgi.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf fcgi-2.4.0.tar.gz
$ cd fcgi-2.4.0/
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install
$ cd ..
$ rm fcgi* -drf

Install Ruby FastCGI Bindings

$ wget http://sugi.nemui.org/pub/ruby/fcgi/ruby-fcgi-0.8.6.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf ruby-fcgi-0.8.6.tar.gz
$ cd ruby-fcgi-0.8.6
$ ruby install.rb config
$ ruby install.rb setup
$ ruby install.rb install
$ cd ..
$ rm ruby-fcgi* -drf

Install MySQL:

$ yum install mysql mysql-server mysql-devel mysql-administrator

Start Lighttpd + mySQL

You can do it by opening “Services” Client

Secure mySQL (set password for root)

$ mysql -uroot -p
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR root@localhost=PASSWORD(’<newPassword>’);
mysql> exit
$ mysql -uroot -p<newPassword>

Now the base is ready we need to do some configuration.

I use the IDE Netbeans 6 to develop my RoR applications. Download and Install Netbeans 6

Install if needed Subversion client

Setup your Subversion repository on http://www.beanstalkapp.com/

As our application is light, we keep the free beansTalk account : 20MB quota, 3 users (including the Anonymous user with read access)

After your setup, you should access your Subversion repository http://<appname>.svn.beanstalkapp.com/<repos>

For checkout only, if you enabled the Anonymous user

Use your users credentials, to checkout, commit, update.

Checkout the empty project :

$ cd ~/workspace; mkdir <app name>; cd <app name>

$ export REPOS=http://<app name>.svn.beanstalkapp.com/<repos>
$ svn co $REPOS/trunk .

Before doing the first import, we first create the skeleton of the Rails application on our desktop.

$ cd ~/workspace

$ rails <app name>

$ cd <app name>
$ svn add –force .

Before commit we should ignore some files:

$ svn revert log/*
Reverted ‘log/development.log’
Reverted ‘log/fastcgi.crash.log’
Reverted ‘log/lighttpd.access.log’
Reverted ‘log/lighttpd.error.log’
Reverted ‘log/production.log’
Reverted ‘log/server.log’
Reverted ‘log/test.log’

$ svn propset svn:ignore “*.log” log
property ’svn:ignore’ set on ‘log’

$ svn revert config/database.yml
Reverted ‘config/database.yml’

$ cp database.yml database.yml.template
$ svn add database.yml.template
$ svn propset svn:ignore “database.yml” config

Ignore db/schema.rb, tmp/* , doc, script, public
$ svn propset svn:ignore “schema.rb” config
$ svn propset svn:ignore “*” tmp
$ svn propset svn:ignore “*doc” doc

Flag as executables script/* and public/dispatch.*
$ svn propset svn:executable “*” `find script -type f | grep -v ‘.svn’` public/dispatch.*

Finally, revert and remove index.html (we’ll do a route for the application)
$ svn revert public/index.html
$ rm public/index.html
$ svn commit –message=”First import project <app name>”

Open your IDE then create your working copy by checkout.

Configure your local mySQL database with the three databases (development, test, production)

$ mysql -uroot mysql

mysql> create database <app name>_development;

mysql> create database <app name>_test;
mysql> create database <app name>_production;

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON <app name>_development.* TO ‘<my app User>’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘newPassword’ WITH GRANT OPTION;

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON <app name>_test.* TO ‘<my app User>’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘newPassword’ WITH GRANT OPTION;

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON <app name>_test.* TO ‘<my app User>’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘newPassword’ WITH GRANT OPTION;

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

mysql> exit

Create a copy of <app name>/config/database.yml.template to <app name>/config/database.yml

Setup your database connections :

development:
adapter: mysql
database: <app name>_development
username: <my app user>
password: <my app user pwd>
socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

test:
adapter: mysql
database: <app name>_test
username: <my app user>
password: <my app user pwd>
socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

production:
adapter: mysql
database: <app name>_production
username: <my app user>
password: <my app user pwd>
socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

Start your WebRick Server and test your application :

$ cd /path/to/your/app; script/server

Open a browser and go to http://localhost:3000/ to see the welcome page