Rails 3 on Ubuntu Karmic Koala (Fivebean)

Ruby Passenger Rails3 Nginx Ubuntu Fivebean GettingThingsRight Hosting VPS | comments

This is one of my "Getting Things Right" posts, a.k.a, "How The Hell Do I Set Up My Rails Site on a VPS host." It’s almost always more difficult to get things right than get things done. I tried Slicehost and Linode before and I always ended up rebuilding because I couldn't get the right setup.

Rails 3 is a little more painful than 2.3.5. This is not due to the framework itself but due to deployment issues. This dissuades a lot of people from even trying. Why should you bother using something that doesn't work on any of your servers? But which is important? "Your application" or "your server" ? Remember that you server exists for your application and not otherwise.

I thought about the idea today as i's Easter Sunday. Happy Easter, all. It’s time to kill the stuff that "kills your time," and wake up from a really bad dream full of passenger errors.

So little time, so much to do. Why should I bother thinking too much. As someone told me, it’s not worth pulling your hair for - got get a Fivebean plan. Fivebean offers fairly cheap VPS hosting. VPS Starter is good enough for a Rails 3 app and some static sites. When your app has probably over 500 users or so and you feel that things are getting slower, upgrade to VPS Bite or VPS Turbo. Do not worry about scaling. 70% of those who do, don’t even get there. I am still paying Dreamhost however and I keep a few sites there. The only thing I like about Dreamhost is it’s good enough as a staging server for Rails apps but they impose a lot of limits - memory limits. They can kill the Ruby processes and your site will be inaccessible for some time. You have the option to contact them and let them move your site to a better server or just get a VPS. Dreamhost PS may not be a very good option as well.

32-bit or 64-bit?

I always choose 32-bit regardless of the plan I take. I took a plan with 768MB memory and still chose 32-bit because based on experience, 768MB is never enough for some applications to run.

So here's the lengthy guide on setting up Rails 3 on Ubuntu Karmic Koala. I may add in comments and stuff I missed later but this should work for you as it worked for me.

ssh root@your-ip-address

or ssh anotherroot@your-ip-address

When using root, you may not use “sudo” anymore.

Edit sources list:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

It should have: 

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main restricted

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates main restricted

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic universe
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates universe

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu karmic-security multiverse

Update Ubuntu.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Set up locale:

sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
sudo /usr/sbin/update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Install build-essential:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Install Ruby 1.8.7

sudo apt-get install ruby irb ri rdoc ruby1.8-dev libzlib-ruby libyaml-ruby libreadline-ruby libncurses-ruby 
libcurses-ruby libruby libruby-extras libfcgi-ruby1.8 build-essential libopenssl-ruby libdbm-ruby libdbi-ruby
 libdbd-sqlite3-ruby sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libsqlite3-ruby libxml-ruby libxml2-dev ri1.8 rdoc1.8

As of this date, there are still some issues with Rails 3 and Ruby 1.9.1. There is a segmentation fault when running “rails server”. It neither works on development or production for me. Until it does work, I will use 1.8.7.

Install rubygems version 1.3.6. Rails 3 Beta 2 requires 1.3.6.

mkdir src
cd src
sudo apt-get install wget
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/69365/rubygems-1.3.6.tgz
tar xvzf rubygems-1.3.6.tgz
cd rubygems-1.3.6
sudo ruby setup.rb

Install the mysql gem (for those using mysql). Since it’s VPS, why not use PostgreSQL? Go ahead and google that if that’s what you need.

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev
sudo gem install mysql --no-rdoc --no-ri

Install Phusion Passenger requirements and the passenger gem.

sudo apt-get install libc6 libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libssl0.9.8 libssl-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev lsb-base

sudo gem install passenger
passenger-install-nginx-module

Create the script for starting and stopping nginx server:

sudo nano /etc/init.d/nginx

Copy this to the new file. 

#! /bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          nginx
# Required-Start:    $all
# Required-Stop:     $all
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: starts the nginx web server
# Description:       starts nginx using start-stop-daemon
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/opt/nginx/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
        . /etc/default/nginx
fi

set -e

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile \
                /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON
        sleep 1
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \
                /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  reload)
          echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
          start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile     /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
              --exec $DAEMON 
          echo "$NAME."
          ;;
      *)
            N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
            echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
            exit 1   
            ;;
    esac

    exit 0

Edit permissions of the script.

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

And finally install Rails 3 Beta 2

sudo gem install arel tzinfo builder memcache-client rack rack-test rack-mount erubis mail text-format thor bundler 
sudo gem install rails --prerelease

Other things you should never forget:

Postfix for sending email

sudo apt-get install postfix

Git for source control management

sudo apt-get install git-core

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