After I finished reading Agile Web Development with Rails, I Have developed my own website.
Now I am trying to deploy my project on linux system I rent, but I know nothing about how to deploy rails.Which server should I user? How to connect to mysql database?
As a java developer, I know I can use tomcat as my server which can convert http request to my own object and use jdbc to connect to my mysql database.
Now I want to know what is the main stream environment rails deployed?
I have heard of Lighttpd and FCGI. Can I use them in the product environment?
thanks
Is your linux system a full VPS (you have complete control?) If not, check your hosting company to see what options are available to you. If so, check to see if they have guides for setting up Rails. A lot (Slicehost, Linode, etc.) do.
Failing that... I would recommend either Apache (or Nginx) with Passenger.
https://www.phusionpassenger.com/
It's pretty straight forward.
As for actually deploying, look into Capistrano (or Vlad). These are a little bit more complicated, but they make life so much easier in the long run.
Related
is it possible to deploy a rails project to a remote server using FileZilla ? the server is running nginx/1.4.6 (ubuntu)
if no what is the best way to deploy the project if there is already a running version !
To answer your question yes, the code needs to be up, so FTP should do the trick. You might need to restart nginx to pick up the changes, usually touching a restart.txt is enough, but that's particular to your setup.
Is this the best way? Possibly not!
Others suggested capistrano and that would be a good fit for a server you maintain, or go Heroku (or similar) service for a simpler setup.
Deploying a Rails app is a tough job. There is always the easy way (heroku) however shared servers don't deal well with rails. Theoretically you can but usually this shared servers have really outdated ruby and rails versions and are absolutely useless. And you can try to connect via ssh and try to update it but i doubt you will be able to do that. So... If you are a rails developer i can suggest.
1- For small apps run Heroku (easy and free) however cost grows like hell with the app's growth
2- If you're thinking about developing big apps get a dedicated server (you can get cheap ones for 5€/month) and configure it as u would for your computer except when you run rails you run it in production.
3- Trust me... i fought enough Rails and shared servers and i quit... I just gave up
I am new to Ruby on Rails. I have been working as junior developer and most of time working on localhost so don't know how to launch Ruby on rails application, How to Configure Ruby on rails application and how to deploy it.
often I came accross following terms but don't know It's meaning and how to use them and where to use them.
Apache
Phusion Passenger
Heroku
nginx
Please Help me and also looking forward to any good tutorial to learn all that terms.
Thanks.
I think there is quite a lot of resources on the web for this, but :
Heroku is a platform as a service. Basically, you push your rails app to a git remote, and that's it, deployed. You can manage addons, workers, and processes from CLI, and scale up/down if you need. Probably the most painless way to start with.
Apache & nginx are two werbservers, I'd say they are the most common in the rails world. Nginx is the latest of the two and it seems to be better for most of the tasks, but if you want to know which to choose, there is several posts on the internet for that too.
Phusion passenger is the bridge (or one of the available bridges) between your rails app and your webserver. If you've done php before, think of it as mod_php.
Since this is all new to you I'd advise that you start with hosting on Heroku. You can do a lot with the free version and it's arguably the easiest way to get started with hosting your rails website. Check out the getting started guide from Heroku. There's also another beginners guide here.
Once you feel comfortable with Heroku your next step could be looking into hosting on your own virtual private server (VPS). The setup is much more manual but things that would cost extra money on Heroku are now free if you set it up yourself on your VPS. Here is a great article on VPS hosting.
For reference, I was hosting websites on Heroku for about a year before I started looking into hosting on my own VPS. Now what I do is start by hosting my projects on Heroku since it's the fastest way to get up and running. Then if the website is successful I transition to a VPS.
I apologize in advance for the fairly simple question.
I am familiar with PHP, but am trying to install this Ruby script on my server for the first time. It's an open source script that I've forked from github, but unfortunately does not have any instructions. I have Ruby on Rails, and MongoDB installed already.
Does anyone know what the beginner steps are to get started? Should I upload everything via FTP to the public directory, or is there something else to this?
Most Rails projects are much better served by having a proper deployment strategy. Typically this involves making your own repository, easily done by forking that existing application, and cloning that on to your server using git. To make changes in the future, do your work on a development copy, push that into the repository, and pull down the changes on the server.
Unlike PHP where many parts of the application can function independently, Rails applications tend to be far more integrated and uploading it piece by piece is not going to work in the long run.
Rails applications can run stand-alone using the provided rails server tool but this is really only intended for light-duty testing or development work. A more permanent solution is to use something like Passenger to do the hosting for you.
Passenger will take care of launching your application when calls are made to the site you've configured in Apache or nginx, depending on which you end up using. Passenger is popular because it's quite easy to get running.
There are other approaches like unicorn if you're feeling more adventurous.
When you make changes to your Rails application in production mode you will have to create a tmp/restart.txt file in the main application directory to tell your web server to restart the process. This is not a requirement in development mode.
Due to the relative complexity of this process once you include all the various steps, you will probably want to use a deployment automation tool like capistrano.
I'm new to Ruby and Rails, but my team is interested in using Redmine for project management. So my question is as follows: How does one deploy Redmine to a load-balanced server (so really two servers) that doesn't currently run and Ruby/rails apps? Would it be necessary to install ruby/rubygems/etc on both servers and proceed with the installation from there? Thx.
If you are going to deploy any rails app, you'll need to have ruby, rubygems, and probably phusion passenger or some other app server (thin, etc.), on both servers.
For redmine, you should consult the install docs:
http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineInstall
And the howto guides for install:
http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/HowTos
In general, when load balancing, the trick is the db, and you can use a number of tricks to replicate and load balance the db, as with any other rails app.
There seems to be one guide for that in the wiki, that leads to these (not terribly helpful) comments:
http://www.redmine.org/boards/1/topics/24727?r=24739#message-24739
http://www.redmine.org/boards/1/topics/16687
My own advice would be to set-up both servers as serving up the rails app, but have one be the active master db, and the other the passive slave, then set-up monitoring on the master and if it goes down, promote the slave to master. How to do this is a longer answer, and much code has been written in this direction. Look-up DRBD and Heartbeat for how to do this on linux for mysql.
We really like the idea of hosting with Amazon EC2 and the excellent EC2 on Rails, but our cashflow isn't enough to justify a move to EC2. So we've decided to host with linode. Now we're trying to put together the best Rails server build.
For those that don't know, EC2 on Rails is an opinionated Ubuntu Linux Server image for Amazon's EC2 hosting service. Out of the box, it runs a standard Ruby on Rails application with little to no customization.
So, is there something like EC2 on Rails for linode?
We'd need at least the following:
Ruby 1.8.7
Ruby on Rails 2.3.8
MySQL 5
memcached
Automatically runs hourly, daily, weekly and monthly scripts if they exist in Rails application’s script directory
Local Postfix SMTP mail server
SSL support
Passenger + Ngnix or Mongrel + Apache
32 bit image Ubuntu
With a railsy setup, meaning fast and simple. So, anyone run across anything like EC2 on Rails, but for linode?
I have been using linode for my personal use for a while and I think no matter what, you are probably going to have to get your hands dirty. I kind of like it for exactly that reason, but that is just my taste. They do have stack scripts with some predefined setups. The closest I can find to what you are looking for is a ruby/apache/mysql script that is fairly customizable.
From the script:
Installs a fully functioning, ready to
go stack that's optimized specifically
for your Linode's resources. By
default, it creates a VirtualHost
using the reverse DNS of your Linode's
primary IP.
This installs a stack based on Ruby,
Apache, and MySQL. This also gives you
the options to install gems so that
you can be up and running Ruby on
Rails in no time.
Optionally creates a MySQL database
and user, and assigns that user grants
to the database.
You may use this as an example for
creating more VirtualHosts. Set up
VirtualHosts, install your sites,
point your domains to your Linode, and
you're set!
This script downloads and compiles the
source from Ruby's ftp. Along with
Ruby, the latest version of ruby gems
is installed and you have a choice of
initial gems to install. Rails and
passenger can be used to have a ready
to go Rails server. Once this script
has finished be sure to run
'passenger-install-apache2-module' to
complete the passenger install.
Note that this script may take 1.5 - 2
hrs depending on the gems that are
specified.
All details of this stack script are
logged to /root/log.txt and the stack
script is finish when the line
"StackScript Finished!" is written to
the log file.
You might have good luck talking to their support though, they might have some more secret sauce that I haven't found yet.
Nothing in that setup sounds EC2-specific beyond the name. It appears it is just convenient to use with EC2, because they let you grab a disk image from another account.
You are welcome to create your own StackScript to do this and contribute it to the community. Once a StackScript is written, it can be marked public and used by others. EC2 on Rails has a public GitHub repository from which you can get started, and honestly, I'd love to see things like this ported to the StackScript system.