If you already used SVN or SVK , give a try to Git, another source code management (scm) system.

I saw for weeks that many Rails/Ruby related projects, including Ruby on Rails framework itself, are hosted on Github, a git repository hosting.

You can begin with a free Github account (you have a repository with 100mo quota).

First install git on your desktop/laptop :

1) On a Mac Intel, you can install Git by Mac ports : First assure you have the latest release of XCode, then reinstall Darwin Ports. To install git launch the following command :

sudo port install git-core

2) You can also install Git manually :

cd /usr/local/src
curl http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.5.tar.gz > git-1.5.5.tar.gz
tar -xvzf git-1.5.5.tar.gz
cd git-1.5.5
make configure
./configure --prefix=/usr
sudo make install

3) On a Fedora just launch the command :

# yum install git

4) On a Debian just launch the command :

# apt-get install git-core

Signup (choose username / password / email and add a public key) on Github.com… then create your repository (specify at least the project name).

Github gives you the following instructions to push your project.

On your desktop, create your project, then push it to the remote repository by launching the following commands :

mkdir <project name>
cd <project name>
git init
touch README
git add README
git commit -m 'first commit'
git remote add origin git@github.com:<github username>/<project name>.git
git push origin master

Once this has been done , i copied the content of a Ruby on Rails application into my local repository, i committed the updates, then pushed everything to the remote repository:

cp -r ../<rails_app>/* .
git add Rakefile
git add app/
git add config/
git add db/
git add doc/
git add lib/
git add log/
git add public/
git add script/
git add test/
git add vendor/
git commit 'My project first import'
git push origin master

Now the skeleton of my RoR application has been pushed to the Github repository.

Explanations : Git is quite different from Subversion , it’s a distributed SCM, which means you can work disconnected from the main repository (remote) by committing your changes locally.

The basic flow for the previous steps is the following :

The first time, you should create your git (local) repo (this create a .git in the root folder of your project):

# git init

Create a file for testing

# touch README

Then add it to your local repo :

# git add README

Commit to your local repo :

# git commit -m 'First commit'

Then we add the Github remote repository to our local repository as a remote server called “origin” (we say remote repo is “tracked”)

# git add remote origin git@github.com:<username>/<project name>.git

Push our changes to the remote repository, in the main branch “master” (being the equivalent of ‘trunk’ in Subversion) :

# git push origin master

Show the branches (-r : only remote branches; -a : all branches) :

# git branch -a

* master

Suppose now another person (B) want to get a copy of (remote) repository :

# cd /path/to/my/workspace

# git clone git@github.com:<username>/<project name>.git

remote: Generating pack...
remote: Done counting 359 objects.
remote: Deltifying 359 objects...
Indexing 359 objects...te:
100% (359/359) doneemote: e done
remote: Total 359 (delta 94), reused 359 (delta 94)
100% (359/359) done
Resolving 94 deltas...
100% (94/94) done

# cd <project name>

Now this person (B) could update a file , then commit and push to the repository.

First do an update in a file from your project.

Show status :

# git status

# On branch master
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#
#       modified:   README
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Add the changes in your local repo :

# git add README

# git status

# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#       modified:   README
#

Commit this change to the local repo :

# git commit -a -m "Test update file"
Created commit 23f0d7f: Test update file
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

Then push these changes to the remote repo :

# git push origin master

updating 'refs/heads/master'
from 80749cfe5dde07cedc7e50be420a266d8b698232
to   23f0d7fa999d2f4d0cbaed550677c9d07f70b8ca
Also local refs/remotes/origin/master
Generating pack...
Done counting 3 objects.
Deltifying 3 objects...
100% (3/3) done
Writing 3 objects...
100% (3/3) done
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
refs/heads/master: 80749cfe5dde07cedc7e50be420a266d8b698232 -> 23f0d7fa999d2f4d0cbaed550677c9d07f70b8ca

Now the first person (A) should get its local mirror in sync with the remote repo : to do this, just launch the command :

# git pull

Updating 80749cf..23f0d7f
Fast forward
README |    1 +
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

We saw the mechanism of Push/Pull, working in the main “master” branch of the repository.

Further readings show you how to manage conflicts, work with other repository branches than “master”.

For Rails projects, you can use Capistrano for deployments combined with a Git SCM like Github.

Further readings :

Setting up a new remote git repository

Sourcemage’s Git guide

Github guides

Deploying with Capistrano

Some times ago i wrote an article about installing a Rails stack on Debian Etch (our production server), then how to configure Apache 2 + fcgid to run our Rails app.

After several tests with this deployment configuration , we encountered some problems of performance (i will detail what our application does in a future article) :

- First with Apache server, after an idle time, then accessing a page of our application, we should wait for a long time before our page loads. Seems fcgid processes take a long time to (re)start.

- In our application, we deliver some files with a download controller : for bigger files, the download was very long.

We decided recently to switch the Apache2 / fcgid configuration to Mongrel (Ruby HTTP server) + nginx (as proxy in front of Mongrel).

I will explain you how to proceed.

We suppose here you have already installed Ruby , Rails, mySQL.

Connect as root and follow these steps :

First stop Apache2 :

#/etc/init.d/apache2 stop

Install Mongrel

# gem install mongrel

# gem install mongrel_cluster

Install nginx:

# aptitude install nginx

Configure what we have installed

We have to setup our server apps to boot when the server starts, and shutdown gracefully when the server reboots.

Concerning nginx, it already did automatically this setup at install:

# ls -l /etc/rc?.d/*nginx
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2008-05-05 11:00 /etc/rc0.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2008-05-05 11:00 /etc/rc1.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2008-05-05 11:00 /etc/rc2.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2008-05-05 11:00 /etc/rc3.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2008-05-05 11:00 /etc/rc4.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2008-05-05 11:00 /etc/rc5.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2008-05-05 11:00 /etc/rc6.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx

As you can see, for runlevels 0, 1 and 6 there is a K at the beginning of the link, for runlevels 2, 3, 4 and 5, there is a S. Those two letters stands for Kill and Start.
On Debian (and Ubuntu), runlevels 2, 3, 4 and 5 are multi-users runlevels.
Runlevel 0 is Halt.
Runlevel 1 is single user mode
Runlevel 6 is reboot

Remove Apache 2 service

By hand you should remove every link /etc/rc.X/*apache2.

Using update-rc.d is as simple as :

# update-rc.d -f apache2 remove

Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/apache2 …
/etc/rc0.d/K09apache2
/etc/rc1.d/K09apache2
/etc/rc2.d/S91apache2
/etc/rc3.d/S91apache2
/etc/rc4.d/S91apache2
/etc/rc5.d/S91apache2
/etc/rc6.d/K09apache2

Add Mongrel service for automatic startup/stop

# cp /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel_cluster-1.0.5/resources/mongrel_cluster /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster

Edit /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster and add the following environment setup:

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin

# chmod +x /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster

# update-rc.d mongrel_cluster defaults
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster …
/etc/rc0.d/K20mongrel_cluster -> ../init.d/mongrel_cluster
/etc/rc1.d/K20mongrel_cluster -> ../init.d/mongrel_cluster
/etc/rc6.d/K20mongrel_cluster -> ../init.d/mongrel_cluster
/etc/rc2.d/S20mongrel_cluster -> ../init.d/mongrel_cluster
/etc/rc3.d/S20mongrel_cluster -> ../init.d/mongrel_cluster
/etc/rc4.d/S20mongrel_cluster -> ../init.d/mongrel_cluster
/etc/rc5.d/S20mongrel_cluster -> ../init.d/mongrel_cluster

But as you can see, the default value is 20 which is pretty different than 91 … a S20 link is started before a S91 and and K91 is kill before K20.

I decided to startup nginx after mongrel, and stop nginx before mongrel. I’ll use 23 for nginx.

First remove nginx symlinks:

# update-rc.d -f nginx remove

Then create symlinks for nginx with custom priorities :

# update-rc.d nginx defaults 23 23
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/nginx …
/etc/rc0.d/K23nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc1.d/K23nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc6.d/K23nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc2.d/S23nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc3.d/S23nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc4.d/S23nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc5.d/S23nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
Create the folder /etc/mongrel_cluster that our Rails app Mongrel config will live in.

# mkdir /etc/mongrel_cluster

Generate the Rails app Mongrel config file:

# mongrel_rails cluster::configure -e production -p 8001 -N 3 -c /path/to/rails/app -C /path/to/rails/app/config/mongrel_cluster.yml -P /path/to/rails/app/log/mongrel.pid -l /path/to/rails/app/log/mongrel.log –user <user> –group <group> -a 127.0.0.1

Verify the config file (/path/to/rails/app/config/mongrel_cluster.yml)

user: <user>
cwd: /path/to/rails/app
log_file: /path/to/rails/app/log/mongrel.log
port: “8001″
environment: production
group: <group>
address: 127.0.0.1
pid_file: /path/to/rails/app/mongrel.pid
servers: 3

Create a symlink to this file into /etc/mongrel_cluster :

ln -s /path/to/your/rails/app/mongrel_cluster.yml /etc/mongrel_cluster/YOURAPPNAME.yml

Configure nginx

We now need to edit our nginx.conf file found in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf to set it up. Edit the values found in my nginx.conf file and modify it to suit your needs.

Nginx is a powerful UNIX tool.

You have noticed we used here nginx as Reverse-Proxy in front of a Mongrel cluster; if the web-server (Mongrel in our case) cannot handle more load , you can even put nginx before the web-server to use it as web-server to handle requests to static files.

Thanks to nginx flexibility, you can pass any types of requests to web-server server by using location sections (all files, only dynamic content requests or some specific locations in your web-server tree):

It should be fine now! Reboot your server and test everything is up after startup :

# shutdown -r now
Nota : Another tool to test: Varnish, an high-performance HTTP-accelerator.

If you find Oracle 10g fairly complex to install - if you find Oracle 10g memory hungry, especially when you’re trying to run several JVMs, and a VMWare instance in parallel with a heavy running Oracle 10g system. Think of Oracle Database 10g Express.

The installation of Oracle XE is straightforward and no necessary modifications of the Kernel params as Oracle 10g.

First install libaio :

# yum install libaio

Then download the Oracle XE rpm from Oracle.

Launch rpm install :

# rpm -ihv oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm

After install launch the following command as root, to configure HTTP Listener, SQL*Net Listener, SYSTEM & SYS passwords.

# /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Configuration
-------------------------------------------------
This will configure on-boot properties of Oracle Database 10g Express
Edition.  The following questions will determine whether the database should
be starting upon system boot, the ports it will use, and the passwords that
will be used for database accounts.  Press <Enter> to accept the defaults.
Ctrl-C will abort.

Specify the HTTP port that will be used for Oracle Application Express [8080]:8888

Specify a port that will be used for the database listener [1521]:

Specify a password to be used for database accounts.  Note that the same
password will be used for SYS and SYSTEM.  Oracle recommends the use of
different passwords for each database account.  This can be done after
initial configuration:
Confirm the password:

Do you want Oracle Database 10g Express Edition to be started on boot (y/n) [y]:y

Starting Oracle Net Listener…Done
Configuring Database…Done
Starting Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Instance…Done
Installation Completed Successfully.
To access the Database Home Page go to “http://127.0.0.1:8888/apex”

The RPM/configure script does not configure environment. Add the following lines in your .profile file :

export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server
export ORACLE_SID=XE
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

Try now a connection as system with SQL*Plus :

# sqlplus system/<password>

If you do heavy use of connection poolings, you could have problems with sessions/processes. Increase this params by connecting as SYSTEM , then launch SQL commands:

alter system set processes=200 scope=spfile;
alter system set sessions=225 scope=spfile;

More about Oracle XE:

Oracle XE is not only a database for novices, students, hobbyists, or small businesses; it can be used in many other situations.

It can bring value to DBAs, developers, analysts in their everyday job, regardless of the size of their businesses.

If you’re developer and you want to try DBA tasks, or you need a R&D database to try out new things it can be for you.

Oracle has built some limitations in the system:

First of all the memory : Oracle XE can not address more than 1GB memory.

Oracle XE can use only one CPU. This does not mean Oracle XE isn’t multi-tasks, but it cannot scale on multi processors machines, by using more than one CPU at a time.

One instance of Oracle XE per computer. It’s not really a limitation if you consider that we do not use one Oracle database per application : Oracle uses the concept of schemas to separate applications.

4GB limit on disk space. Even if it seems small, compared to multi terabytes of data warehouses, 4GB is already a huge amount for many applications.

Examples of uses :

The aggregation angle : you could consider to install Oracle XE instances on your users’s desktops, then schedule purges and refreshes of aggregated data (by push or pull). Advantages are : users can have control of their data, you reduce the load on your enterprise hardware, and you reduce the licenses costs for your Oracle database Enterprise Edition.

For the developer :

The configuration of Oracle XE is minimalist, so you can concentrate on the developments. Nevertheless, if you want to try DBA Tasks, you are in complete control.

The Admin control is a web GUI developed with Oracle Application Express(APEX, ex HTML Db) : you can create users with this admin tool, or if you prefer use Oracle SQL*Plus.

Oracle Express doesn’t support Java in the database (no internal JVM) : you can nevertheless connect an external JVM using JDBC.

The .NET CLR external process listener is included, so registered .NET programs can be called from database PL/SQL stored procedures. .NET support only exists on Windows version of Oracle XE.

Other development tools like Toad, SQL Developer, JDeveloper, Forms, PHP, Ruby are supported.

Oracle Database XE includes the Application Express Web-based development and deployment tool as well as XML DB. With the latter, you can immediately start using XML, WebDAV, and the built-in HTTP and FTP servers.

Finally, for people on Mac who are virtualizing guest OSes using Parallels, you have the opportunity to get an ASPLinux (based on Fedora Core) appliance, instrumented with Oracle Express 10g here.

More informations here

I recently installed Leopard on my Mac and lost a VMWare appliance of Linux (Oracle Enterprise Linux), instrumented with an Oracle database , that i ran before on Mac OS X Tiger using VMWare Fusion beta.

So i decided to install the last release of Ubuntu , Hardy Heron 8.04 :

- Firstly to have a simple platform with a Ruby on Rails stack for testing my current project Sudorace on Linux.

- Secondly i chose Ubuntu and not RedHat EL again (neither CentOS) because i currently do not need an instance of Oracle database for my personal purposes (i follow the YAGNI “You Ain’t Gonna Need It”). Working all business days in a full Oracle environment, i do not need now this kind of environment for my personal purposes; if tomorrow i should have an Oracle database instance, or an App Server, so i will install again the “Enterprise Linux” from Oracle.

I use VMWare Fusion , because i encountered problems while installing Linux with Parallels at a time. It seems Parallels team first focused on running Windows well.

About VMWare:

VMWare is the leader in virtual infrastructures for years. I remember a time near 2003, when we used VMWare to run Linux on a Windows host, for testing an Oracle database & Oracle RAC. VMWare declined the Mac version (VMWare fusion) once Apple switched to x86, but after Parallels.

Register for an evaluation or purchase a license then download VMWare Fusion

Download Ubuntu 8.04

Burn the ISO on a CD-R or keep it on your Hard Drive (you can install Ubuntu with VMWare Fusion from the ISO file)

Create a virtual machine with VMWare Fusion

Launch VMWare Fusion

Click the New button

Click Continue

Choose Linux then Ubuntu, and click Continue

Select name (Ubuntu Hardy Heron) and Location (mine is ~/Library/VMWare)

Specify HDD size

Check “Start virtual machine and install OS now” then choose the ISO file for Ubuntu, or the CD.

Click Finish, then Ubuntu installation starts.

As every Linux install you’ll have a few questions to answer before the installation starts.

Choose the language

Choose the timezone

Choose the keyboard : in my case US English - Mac (i have a qwerty keyboard)

And the installation starts… you can relax ~20 minutes.

Once Ubuntu installed shut down the system, and before next reboot, verify all the devices are well connected

Now the systems starts up.

Enter your login/password you setup during installation

VMWare Tools

Verify you have gcc installed. To install it, launch the command in a Terminal : sudo apt-get install build-essential

Install VMWare Tools :

Choose from the menu Virtual Machine -> Install VMWare Tools

The following packages will be downloaded

Copy VMWareTools-e.x.p-*.tar.gz to /tmp then in a Terminal window untar the tarball (tar xzvf VMWareTools-e.x.p*.tar.gz).

[UPDATE] Thanks for comments.

“It turns out that some changes to the Linux kernel — Ubuntu 8.04 uses Linux 2.6.24 — have introduced some issues that make running Ubuntu in a VMWare virtual machine difficult. Ubuntu will install just fine, but you won’t have access to VMWare Tools, which provides some nice features like shared folders and clipboard syncing.

While VMWare hasn’t released a solution yet, the company did recently open source its VM Tools and there’s already a very nice post in the VMWare forums on how to integrate the needed packages from open-vm-tools into into vmtools.” [Wired]

Install open-vmware-tools

Pre-requisities :

sudo apt-get install build-essential libgtk2.0-dev
sudo apt-get install libproc-dev libdumbnet-dev xorg-dev
cd Desktop/

Download from SourceForge Open VM Tools

Untar open-vm-tools-2008.05.02-90473.tar.gz

cd open-vm-tools-2008.05.02-90473/
./configure && make
cd modules/linux/

In the modules/linux folder we have the vmblock, vmhgfs, vmmemctl, vmsync and vmxnet modules that we need to tar up and place into the official VMware tools tarball:

for i in *; do mv ${i} ${i}-only; tar -cf ${i}.tar ${i}-only; done
cd ../../..

mv -f open-vm-tools-2008.04.14-87182/modules/linux/*.tar vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/source/

Now we can run the regular VMware tools installer:

cd vmware-tools-distrib

Launch the installation : sudo ./vmware-install.pl

I’ve not compared all the features between a Linux installed on Parallels and Linux installed on VMWare Fusion, but what we can do with VMWare Fusion is the following :

DragDrop Files between Mac OS X & the virtual machine, Copy & Paste text between Mac OS X & the virtual machine, Moving the cursor between Mac OS X & the virtual machine, support for Airport Wireless network, Mounting USB drives, Resizing the Virtual Machine window.

Share Folder:

You can setup a Shared Folder on Mac OS X from VMWare Fusion (Virtual Machine settings)

From Ubuntu, the Public folder will be shown into /mnt/hgfs folder.

Now , if you want to install a complete RoR stack, you should follow the steps i described for the Debian Etch.

[UPDATE] Source for VMWare Tools fixing : Peter Cooper’s blog

Today should be released the last Linux Ubuntu Hardy Heron, v. 8.04. Check this afternoon or in the evening.

Here is a second article about installing Ruby on Rails stack on a Linux Debian Etch. In our case, the host is our production server.

This article does not include Apache 2 , mySQL installation. Our server had been prepared with the LAMP stack.

This article includes Ruby, RoR, additional gems (Capistrano 2, openwferu-scheduler), Apache 2 / FastCGI configuration, mySQL securization, msmtp + GMail configuration to notify our application’s users.

We chose to use Apache 2/FastCGI because it’s simple to configure and we do not plan an intensive use of our application (we don’t care scaling for the moment).

Install Ruby:
As root or with sudo command.
$ aptitude install ruby libzlib-ruby rdoc irb

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

By default the binary is named : /usr/bin/gem1.8
Create the lunk ‘gem’
$ cd /usr/bin
$ ln -s gem1.8 gem

Install MySQL C Ruby Bindings
$ aptitude install libmysqlclient15-dev
$ gem install mysql — –with-mysql-config=/usr/bin/mysql_config

Install rails 1.2.5
$ gem install rails -v 1.2.5 –include-dependencies

Upgrade to 2.0.2 :

$ gem update rails

Install Mongrel

$ apt-get install ruby1.8-dev
$ gem install mongrel
$ apt-get install dpatch fakeroot debhelper libtool dpkg-dev autoconf
automake m4 bison flex gcc make subversion cvs
$ gem install mongrel

Install Capistrano 2

$ gem install fastthread
$ gem install capistrano

Install openwferu-scheduler

$ gem install openwferu-scheduler

Configure Apache

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-2.4.0 -drf

Install Apache2 mod_fcgid
$ apt-get install libapache2-mod-fcgid
$ /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Verify the config for mod_fcgid :
Edit /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/fcgid.conf

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
SocketPath /var/lib/apache2/fcgid/sock
DefaultInitEnv RAILS_ENV production
IdleTimeout 600
ProcessLifeTime 3600
MaxProcessCount 8
DefaultMinClassProcessCount 3
DefaultMaxClassProcessCount 3
IPCConnectTimeout 8
IPCCommTimeout 48
</IfModule>

Edit /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/fcgid.load

LoadModule fcgid_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_fcgid.so

Enable mod_rewrite

$ a2enmod rewrite
$ /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Configure Apache2 :

Edit sites-enables/000-default

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin administrator@yourcompany.org

DocumentRoot /var/www/<your app>/current/public/
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
ServerSignature On

<Directory /var/www/<your app>/current/public/>
Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Edit <your app>/public/.htaccess (in your working copy then commit)

AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
ErrorDocument 500 “<h2>Application error</h2>Rails application failed to start properly”

Configure GMail :

Install msmtp :
$ apt-get install msmtp

Configure Certificates
$ mkdir /etc/.certs
$ chmod 775 /etc/.certs
$ cd /tmp; wget https://www.verisign.com/support/thawte-roots.zip
$ cd Thawte \Server\ Roots/
$ cp ThawtePremiumServerCA_b64.txt /etc/.certs/ThawtePremiumServerCA.crt

Configure /etc/.msmtprc (as root, then change ownership to your application running process ..can be www-data)

$ touch /etc/.msmtprc; chown www-data /etc/.msmtprc
$ nano /etc/.msmtprc

account gmail
host smtp.gmail.com
port 587
auth on
user <your account>@gmail.com
password <your GMail password>
tls_starttls on
tls on
tls_trust_file /etc/.certs/ThawtePremiumServerCA.crt
from <your account>@gmail.com

Configure /path/to/your/app/config/environment.rb (in your working copy then commit)

ActionMailer::Base.raise_delivery_errors = true

ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :msmtp

module ActionMailer
class Base
def perform_delivery_msmtp(mail)
thread = Thread.new do
IO.popen(”/usr/bin/msmtp -t -C /etc/.msmtprc -a gmail –”, “w”) do |sm|
sm.puts(mail.encoded.gsub(/\r/, ”))
sm.flush
end
end
thread.run
end
end
end

MySQL configuration :

We suppose our RoR application has already been created, then imported into a Subversion Repository. You already know how to connect to a production database (you already should have  done this setup locally). Now replicate this production database configuration on the production server:

$ mysql -uroot mysql
mysql> create database <app name>_production;
mysql> Query OK, 1 row affected (0.06 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON <app name>_production.* TO ‘<user name>’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘<newPassword>’ WITH GRANT OPTION;
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.11 sec)
mysql> exit;

$ mysql -u<user name> -<NewPassword> <app name>_production

mysql> create table Toto(id int, test text);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.05 sec)
mysql> drop table Toto;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.03 sec)

mysql> exit;

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

In a further article i will explain the goal of our application, give some tricks we used, and explain how to configure Capistrano 2 for remote deployment from the developer’s desktop.

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

Fringland has released the software Fring for jailbreaked iPhones: Fring allows to chat but also to do VoIP. Already released on many mobile platforms, Fring works for IM Yahoo!, AOL AIM Messenger, Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, SIP and Twitter.

A “Freeze” event happened in Geneva (Switzerland) on April 12, 02:00 PM, in the Cornavin Train Station.

This event already happened in other train stations (New York).

Being fan of many Marvel superheroes since the early beginning of eighties, i’ve seen today this news about how Oracle did a cooperation with Marvel. The communication is focused on the future movie “IronMan”, with Robert Downey Jr, but a new release of the Incredible Hulk (with Ed Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth and Robert Downey Jr) is also coming soon.

Marvel Entertainment relies on Oracle to manage growth and provide seamless technology integration. View the article online

Source : Oracle

And thanks to Carl , who twitts about this news