How to monitor the log file of Rails application? - ruby-on-rails

I have a Rails application, and run it with Nginx and Passenger, for maintanence the application, we need to monitor the log file, and email to developer team when there is any exception existed, is there any gems can do this thing, or is there any other solution?

You could use Splunk for monitoring and notification. It's free for up to 500M/day.

Use Airbrake. It's awesome, easy, and there are free options available for development.

Related

Logging stacktraces when running a Rails app on Thin

This is probably something stupid as I have never deployed a Rails app before. However:
I developed the app using WEBrick. When I got an exception, I'd get a helpful stacktrace in the console. Now I am deploying the app to Thin, running as a Windows service (I am not using Windows by choice, I hasten to add).
When the app gets an exception running in Thin, all I get in the logs is: Completed 500 Internal Server Error in 31ms. No stacktrace or description of the error. When I run it in Thin in the console I get a description of the error, but no class name or line number. I'm sure it's some simple config but a bit of googling has turned up nothing so far. Can anyone shed any light on how to get more informative error logging?
On a related note, what's the simplest and best way to set up email notifications on error in a Rails app?
Ignore me - I was being stupid. I created some extra environments for the app (a sales and a uat environment) and foolishly copied config/environments/test.rb which has
config.action_dispatch.show_exceptions = false
and I now feel quite foolish.
what's the simplest and best way to set up email notifications on error in a Rails app?
The exception_notification gem.

Preferable way to distribute a Rails app

Although Rails and PHP have different deployment methods, what is the preferable way to distribute a FOSS Rails app? Suppose one of the major PHP apps - Magento, Drupal, Wordpress had been build upon RoR, what would have been the preferable way for them to have distributed their application?
Packaging up the code as a gem seems to be the wrong approach for a complete out-of-the-box application, but I could be wrong.
Coming from the world of PHP with its upload-and-go approach, and being a newcomer to Rails, it's rather opaque at the moment to see how code could be easily and effectively distributed.
Packaging a completed Rails app as a gem is probably the wrong approach. I think the best solution is to provide access to a git repository or a tarball of your git repo.
If you want to offer your users something more than rake db:schema:load to setup your app it's pretty easy to create custom setup commands.
Many applications are packaged with the source code just like typical PHP applications. While deploying Rails applications may seem difficult its expected that the user will know how to set up the server properly according to their environment and needs. The only issue you need to worry about is distributing the code, setting up the server is not a domain that you are going to want to help with.
For information on deployment in Rails you should see the deployment page here.
Well, usually Rails apps run in environment running Apache + Passenger (aka mod_rails).
Deployment is easily done with Capistrano gem.
When you're running Rails app in shared host environment, they usually use fcgi/cgi dispatchers to run Ruby.

How do you remove a Ruby on Rails app from a production server?

I'd like to replace our existing Ruby on Rails application with a new version of the site in PHP, but I'm not sure how to remove the rails app from our shared VPS server.
Is there a way to delete the app via FTP or some way to remove it in Cpanel? The developers set it up to use a custom deployment script. Are there any typical uninstall scripts that might remove it?
Ideally, I'd like to avoid completely re-provisioning the server instance because I don't want to lose our blog database and email accounts.
Sorry for such a dumb noob question, but I'd really be grateful for some advice.
Thanks so much!
If its on linux, it should be at /var/www. Remove the database entries and put the PHP versions there too.

How to deploy a Rails app to Dreamhost?

I'm kind of lost, I try to deploy my application on a shared dreamhost server.
Now everything works fine locally. It's my first try at Rails, and I'm not really a programmer or sysadmin, just hacking something together.
On Dreamhost, if I start webrick, it works fine on port 3000, but webricks gets killed pretty quickly, I guess that makes sense.
So what do I have to do to make it run?
I enabled fastcgi support and mod_rails.
Now, how do I get the app constantly running?
I keep reading about having to do things to .htaccess and to dispatch.fcgi.
But I can't find any dispatch file in my rails app (2.3.2).
Do I have to create that one manually? Doesn't really feeld very rails-like to me. I didn't really manage to find out what this dispatch file does, and why it's needed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I looked at the DH Wiki, but couldn't figure it out (http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Rails)
Additions:
I enabled mod_rails and pointed to the public directory (I had already done that).
I keep getting an error: screencast.com/t/KamqVawk
Hm, server logs look like there is actually no request, so this might be a problem on dreamhosts end. It's strange I see that the access.log show a new change date, when I try to access the page, but there is no request noted, error.log is empty too.
Dreamhost Support Answer:
The server was up to date, so that wasn't the problem.
They proposed freezing the Gems, which I did (see: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Freezing_Gems)
But it didn't help.
I guess I'm giving up, and looking into hosting which is specialized for rails.
Thx for all your help!
Changed to hostingrails.com
I got the app working on hostingrails.com, passenger on hostingrails.com showed me errors, which weren't shown by dreamhost or mongrel. By correcting these errors, I got the app working.
Dreamhost won't let you use webrick if you're using shared hosting. You can either use FastCGI or Passenger to host Rails on shared DH (mongrel is an option if you upgrade to DreamhostPS, but that's obviously more expensive).
For FastCGI, you will need a dispatch.fcgi file (older versions of Rails would generate one when you created a new Rails app, but that stopped around 2.2 if I remember correctly) as well as code in your .htaccess to send requests to the dispatcher. See the Dreamhost Ruby on Rails wiki page for details about setting up FastCGI.
The more preferable option is to set up your application to run on Phusion Passenger (aka mod_rails). It should be pretty simple through your Dreamhost panel, you just need to enable the domain to use mod_rails, and then set the directory for the domain to the public directory of your application. See the Passenger wiki page for more details.

Windows Rails-IDE with Remote-File-Support (FTP/sFTP)

I am currently using Aptana RadRails for Ruby on Rails development on my local system.
Now I want to work on a Rails-Application that is hosted on my dedicated server, but unfortunatly RadRails does not provide support for Remote File Access (apart from SVN).
Is there an IDE for Rails-Applications that gives me the ability to work on an application on my remote server transparently?
Is this what you're looking for?
You're doing it wrong!
Seriously, you should be using source control and you should be releasing your software with a deployment tool like vlad or capistrano.
You run your app locally, commit changes, then run deploys to your server. Once things are setup you shouldn't need to even log in to your server.
Developing the way you're doing is going to cause many headaches and reduce your productivity. Now the snide rails developer comment, if you really cared about productivity you wouldn't be using windows in the first place...
It's not available yet, but Haven will allow you to edit files via FTP/SFTP in your browser. It will also allow you to plug into your source control if that's where your stuff is. It should be a nice alternative to the current fat client options.
Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of Wikid Labs.

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