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HOWTO: Ruby on Rails with Apache + Passenger (Mod_Rails) ~ Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04
5/06/2010To get up and running I followed (1) and had a basic RoR setup with Mongrel, but I really wanted to get Passenger setup as well. This was of course a much more involved process.
I started off by following the very basic install guide on the dedicated page for Passenger. However, Mozketo (2) indicated that I needed to get a few more libs first.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 | @ubuntuServer:~/Desktop/RoR/myapp/app/views/users$ sudo apt-get install apache2-prefork-dev libapr1-dev libaprutil1-dev [sudo] password for administrator: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: linux-headers-2.6.32-21 linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic-pae Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: comerr-dev krb5-multidev libdb4.8-dev libexpat1-dev libgssrpc4 libkadm5clnt-mit7 libkadm5srv-mit7 libkdb5-4 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev libmysqlclient-dev libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libpq-dev libpq5 libssl-dev uuid-dev zlib1g-dev Suggested packages: krb5-doc db4.8-doc krb5-user postgresql-doc-8.4 The following NEW packages will be installed: apache2-prefork-dev comerr-dev krb5-multidev libapr1-dev libaprutil1-dev libdb4.8-dev libexpat1-dev libgssrpc4 libkadm5clnt-mit7 libkadm5srv-mit7 libkdb5-4 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev libmysqlclient-dev libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libpq-dev libpq5 libssl-dev uuid-dev zlib1g-dev 0 upgraded, 21 newly installed, 0 to remove and 22 not upgraded. Need to get 9,968kB of archives. After this operation, 36.9MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y |
finally,
1 | @ubuntuServer:~/Desktop/RoR/myapp/app/views/users$ sudo gems install passenger |
The passenger installer was quite interactive,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 | @ubuntuServer:~/Desktop/RoR/myapp$ sudo passenger-install-apache2-module Welcome to the Phusion Passenger Apache 2 module installer, v2.2.13. This installer will guide you through the entire installation process. It shouldn't take more than 3 minutes in total. Here's what you can expect from the installation process: 1. The Apache 2 module will be installed for you. 2. You'll learn how to configure Apache. 3. You'll learn how to deploy a Ruby on Rails application. Don't worry if anything goes wrong. This installer will advise you on how to solve any problems. Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl-C to abort. -------------------------------------------- Checking for required software... * GNU C++ compiler... found at /usr/bin/g++ * Ruby development headers... found * OpenSSL support for Ruby... found * RubyGems... found * Rake... found at /usr/bin/rake * rack... found * Apache 2... found at /usr/sbin/apache2 * Apache 2 development headers... found at /usr/bin/apxs2 * Apache Portable Runtime (APR) development headers... found at /usr/bin/apr-1-config * Apache Portable Runtime Utility (APU) development headers... found at /usr/bin/apu-1-config -------------------------------------------- Compiling and installing Apache 2 module... cd /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.13 . . . -------------------------------------------- The Apache 2 module was successfully installed. Please edit your Apache configuration file, and add these lines: LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.13/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.13 PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8 After you restart Apache, you are ready to deploy any number of Ruby on Rails applications on Apache, without any further Ruby on Rails-specific configuration! Press ENTER to continue. -------------------------------------------- Deploying a Ruby on Rails application: an example Suppose you have a Rails application in /somewhere. Add a virtual host to your Apache configuration file and set its DocumentRoot to /somewhere/public: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.yourhost.com DocumentRoot /somewhere/public # <-- be sure to point to 'public'! <Directory /somewhere/public> AllowOverride all # <-- relax Apache security settings Options -MultiViews # <-- MultiViews must be turned off </Directory> </VirtualHost> And that's it! You may also want to check the Users Guide for security and optimization tips, troubleshooting and other useful information: /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.13/doc/Users guide Apache.html Enjoy Phusion Passenger, a product of Phusion (www.phusion.nl) :-) http://www.modrails.com/ Phusion Passenger is a trademark of Hongli Lai & Ninh Bui. |
At this stage I knew that these directives were rather dated as Apache2 handles things rather differently now, especially when it comes to virtual hosts and enabling mods. Mozketo (2) details how to create the following two files – you will notice how the strings are the updated versions compared to those given on Mozketo…
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 | # /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.load # http://mozketo.com/phusion-passenger-on-ubuntu-9-10/ LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.13/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so # /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.conf: <IfModule passenger_module> PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.13 PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8 </IfModule> |
I setup the virtual host as follows,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 | # /etc/apache2/sites-available/webapps.local <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName webapps.local ServerAlias *.webapps.local DocumentRoot "/home/mike/Desktop/webapps/" RailsEnv development RailsBaseURI /myapp <Directory "/home/mike/Desktop/webapps/"> AllowOverride all Options -MultiViews </Directory> </VirtualHost> @ubuntuServer:/etc/apache2/$ sudo a2ensite webapps.local @ubuntuServer:/etc/apache2/$ sudo a2enmod rewrite @ubuntuServer:/etc/apache2/$ sudo a2enmod passenger @ubuntuServer:/etc/apache2/$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart |
To make development a bit easier I setup the following symlink,
1 2 | # sym link ln -s ~/Desktop/railapps/myapp/public ~/Desktop/webapps/myapp |
The hosts file on the server needed a bit of changes as well
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 | @ubuntuServer:/etc/apache2/$ cat /etc/hosts # /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 ubuntuServer 127.0.0.1 webapps.local # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts ::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback fe00::0 ip6-localnet ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters |
…and on my iMac as well,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 | @iMac27:~$ cat /etc/hosts ## # Host Database # # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface # when the system is booting. Do not change this entry. ## 127.0.0.1 localhost 10.0.0.20 webapps.local 255.255.255.255 broadcasthost ::1 localhost fe80::1%lo0 localhost |
Here’s a snippet of an active rails app,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | @ubuntuServer:~/Desktop/railapps/myapp$ tail -f log/development.log # .. Processing UsersController#index (for 172.16.7.113 at 2010-06-03 11:32:37) [GET] User Load (1.1ms) SELECT * FROM "users" Rendering template within layouts/application Rendering users/index Completed in 29ms (View: 16, DB: 1) | 200 OK [http://webapps.local/myapp/users] # .. |
To restart an app, one only needs to ‘touch’ it…how cute!
1 | @ubuntuServer:~/Desktop$ touch webapps/myapp/tmp/restart.txt |
References
(1) [all variants] Install Ruby on Rails – Lucid Lynx
(2) Phusion Passenger on Ubuntu 9.10
(3) Installing Ruby on Rails on Debian/Ubuntu
(4) Replacing Mongrel with Passenger (mod_rails)
(5) Passenger
Better VNC in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx with x11vnc
1/06/2010Been working with Ubuntu Lucid a bit over the past few days and am not a big fan of the Vino VNC “Remote Desktop”. The problem is that it doesn’t persist when logged out. To get around this I setup x11vnc as per the HOWTO referenced at the end of this post.
Running it is quite simple, first ssh as follow:
1 | ssh -L 5900:localhost:5900 yourUserName@serverIP |
To bring up the login window for your ‘user’ account, run the following as root:
1 | root@ubuntuServer:~# x11vnc -auth /home/someuser/.Xauthority -rfbauth ~/.vnc/passwd -display :0 |
At this stage, simply connect with ChickenVNC. VNC login password has been setup as per the referred guide and stored in the above mentioned location. Remember, when running the above at root, you need to recreate the password in ‘/root/.vnc’ – the root users home directory.
VNC Tunneling via SSH
In the very first ssh command, by using the ‘-L’ flag we bind the a port on the server we SSH to with a port defined on our host – localhost. This port has, for this example at least, chosen as 5900. We also force X11 forwarding,
1 | ssh -X -L 5900:localhost:5900 yourUserName@serverIP |
Ensure your /etc/ssh/ssh_config file is edited properly as well (here) & (here).
Achieve SSH tunnelling by using the ‘-localhost’ flag as follows:
1 | root@ubuntuServer:~# x11vnc -auth /home/someuser/.Xauthority -rfbauth ~/.vnc/passwd -localhost -display :0 |
Now just connect ChickenVNC, or your VNC viewer of choice, to localhost:0 (with the chosen password if needed) to connect with SSH tunnelling!
Reference:
(1) HOWTO: Share desktops with x11vnc instead of built-in Remote Desktop