I have a web server serving multiple Rails applications using a combination of nginx and Passenger. This is pretty straightforward, because the Passenger install sets-up pretty much everything you need to connect to nginx.
I found "Rails app with Puma" that seems to explain how to set up nginx and Puma together. How would this configuration need to be modified in order to serve a second Rails application on the same server?
Also, this guide doesn't say anything about restarting the application automatically if there is a system reboot or some other issue. Is there a way to do that? The nginx + Passenger combo seems to do it by default.
I'm migrating my rails app (still in development) from Thin to Unicorn. My app uses config.force_ssl = true.
When using Thin I could just write:
thin start --ssl
My question is: What is the equivalent way to start Unicorn with ssl in development?
If I correctly understood your question, you're trying to run unicorn on port 443.
This is a bad idea.
Instead, to achieve the same goal, I would suggest, run unicorn on an unprivileged port (above 1024), or better on a unix socket, and switch Nginx before, passing all static stuff directly trough nginx, and the rails stuff, trough unicorn.
I know this doesn't answer your question, but for the user, it will work exactly the same, with some benefits when your app server (unicorn) crashes, for example a nice rendered 502 error page served via nginx instead of a plain network error message seen in the browser of your users.
You can with this solution run X different applications on the same port, with different subdomains. a must have for a development machine with many projects.
My head is about to explode from the mangled mess as a result of the following few days trying to setup a development environment for Rails, Apache and Passenger.
The questions I have are:
Do you NEED passenger for a development environment? Can I just develop with pow.cx instead? - I am 99.99% sure the answer is no (you don't use passenger for development), but I need confirmation since I am deeply confused now.
When I deploy, I only use Passenger for that, correct? I.e. I don't ever touch passenger until I deploy.
Is my development environment correct?
Production deployment is simply moving a rails application under the effects of Passenger coupled with an Apache VHOST?
Background (I suggest you read):
It seems that all the information on the web is concerned about explaining things for people who already know what they are doing, rather than explaining in detail how things work it's just a series of installation steps and that has left me extremely confused on the role of things, and how to setup a development environment and deploy a RoR application correctly - so please bear with this long question.
For the past 3 days I have been trying to setup a development environment on my Macbook Pro that isn't destroyed by Apple's rediculous limits on Apache installations. I installed a custom Apache install (from bitnami using their ruby stack, since I refuse to use Server.app) so that I can run Apache and upgrade things like PHP to 5.5 easily, and that works fine.
I am trying to get into RoR but so far it has been a struggle, and I am about ready to give up.
I understand you need Apache to serve Rails applications so that the server can handle requests concurrently rather than one at a time, and that various interfaces for this exist like Thin or whatever; Passenger was highly recommended.
I installed Passenger via their instructions and did some hackery to compile it for the Bitnami passenger installation, rather than the default Apache on Mac OS X - and it's working. When I start apache and run: passenger-memory-stats I get results expected from the installation guide, so that tells me passenger is running.
However, when I try and deploy a simple hello world Rails application I get a slew of "We're sorry…" or no result at all and just a blank page.
I am fairly sure my development environment is correct, everything works except this last bit. I can picture development taking place on a pow.cx server, and once deployment is ready you simply copy the Rails application and configure Apache's VHOST to point to your ready-to-deploy app while Passenger handles the rest, is that correct?
I am using PostgresSQL via the Postgress.app, the server works fine and I can connect to it.
I have gem 'pg' in my Gemfile.
I have already read, and tried every conceivable solution from the following SO questions, but I either get no result or empty logs which is… infuriating to say the least:
We're sorry, but something went wrong. - with Rails, Apache, Passenger
Ruby on Rails: How can i edit database.yml for postgresql?
How do I set up the database.yml file in Rails?
https://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/187128
So with all that said, I am trying to deploy this hello world application (which works on a standard rails server) using the following:
INVOKING APPLICATION VIA:
http://dmarket.local:8081/
VHOSTS:
<VirtualHost *:8081>
PassengerEnabled on
RailsEnv production
ErrorLog /Applications/rubystack/apache2/htdocs/helloworld/project_error.log
CustomLog /Applications/rubystack/apache2/htdocs/helloworld/project_error.log combined
ServerName dmarket.local:8081
ServerAlias www.dmarket.local:8081
DocumentRoot "/Applications/rubystack/apache2/htdocs/helloworld/public"
PassengerPreStart http://dmarket.local:8081
<Directory "/Applications/rubystack/apache2/htdocs/helloworld/public">
Allow from all
Options -MultiViews
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
HOSTS FILE:
127.0.0.1 dmarket.local
127.0.0.1 www.dmarket.local
DATABASE.YML (same for development, test, and production):
adapter: postgresql
encoding: unicode
host: 127.0.0.1
port: 5432
database: tsujp
pool: 5
username: tsujp
password:
A summary of answers to your questions
You don't need Passenger in development. You can develop with Pow, and deploy with Passenger.
But you can use Passenger in development if you want to. It is a good idea to use Passenger in development because that way your development environment will match your production environment more, which reduces the risk of running into unexpected problems when you deploy.
Using Passenger in development is very easy. Use it's Standalone mode, and run passenger start instead of rails server.
Pow is strictly a development-only server. The authors recommend against using it in production.
When you deploy, you touch Passenger. You don't have to touch Passenger until deployment time, but you may.
Production deployment is indeed moving an application under the effects of Passenger, and setting up a virtual host. You will of course also need to install gems (bundle install) setup the database (editing config/database.yml), running database migrations (bundle exec rake db:migrate), etc.
I've also posted updates on the posts that you linked to, in order to make life easier for people who happened to have found those posts via search.
Apache vs Nginx
You will find a lot of people recommending Nginx (e.g. Sergio just did). I second that recommendation. Nginx is faster than Apache, handles slow clients better and is generally easier to use.
Passenger works great with Nginx. It has an Nginx integration mode that is just as easy as the Apache mode. Sergio suggested Nginx + Unicorn or Nginx + Puma, but Nginx + Passenger (which replaces Unicorn/Puma) is much easier to setup, performs great, uses less memory, works better and has more features. Nginx + Unicorn requires a lot of configuration, process management using init scripts, etc.
But this is just a recommendation. You don't have to use Nginx. Sticking with Apache + Passenger is fine. Apache works well enough for most people.
Regarding your Passenger problems
However, when I try and deploy a simple hello world Rails application I get a slew of "We're sorry…" or no result at all and just a blank page.
Whenever you get an unexpected error, the first thing you should do is to read the log files. There are two log files that are important to you:
The web server error log, typically /var/log/apache/error.log. This log file contains:
Phusion Passenger error messages.
Everything that the Rails application writes to STDERR. This typically consists of errors that Rails encounters during startup (but not errors that it encounters when it's handling requests).
The Rails development log (or production log, in case you're running in production), log/development.log (or log/production.log). When an error occurs during request handling, it is typically logged here. This file does not contain errors that Rails encounters during startup.
The error messages will often tell you what the problem is and how to solve it.
This tip can also be found in the Phusion Passenger manual, Troubleshooting section.
Capistrano
Sergio recommended Capistrano. I second that recommendation. You should remember that Capistrano complements Passenger; it does not replace Passenger. Capistrano is a tool for automating tasks. Do you currently create a tarball of your app and scp it to your server, and extract it there? Well, Capistrano automates this sort of thing for you.
For more information about how all the different pieces of the stack fit together (Apache, Passenger, Capistrano, HAProxy, Chef, etc), check out the section "The big picture" on the Phusion Passenger documentation page.
Recommendation summary
Use passenger start in development. It is by far the easiest to get started with. You don't have to edit any configuration files, it works immediately.
Use Phusion Passenger for Nginx in production.
You don't need Passenger in development. In fact, in development mode you don't need even apache. You can use built-in Webrick server ($ rails server) to run your app. And yes. Pow is a good tool, I use it all the time.
In production there are also multiple options. One of them is Apache+Passenger, yes. But you need to put Nginx in front of those (because Apache doesn't handle slow clients very well). If you have nginx, then you can replace apache+passenger with something else. For a long time I've been using Unicorn (ruby web server from github). Now my current favourite is Puma. It uses less resources than unicorn, but has more requirements to your code (it better be thread-safe, because puma is a threaded server).
Now, to the development-production discrepancy: it is known that development should resemble production as closely as possible, because it minimizes risks when deploying. So, my suggestion is: use unicorn everywhere (both development and production). Only on production put nginx in front of it.
Also,
for actually performing deploys, look into Capistrano. It became industry standard for deploying rails apps (but it can also deploy PHP, static files and what have you).
I'm developing an small application on RoR and OSX 10.6.4 workstation, and I'm looking for guidance on two things: -
How to share my application locally with others so others in my team can get access to my local webserver (Mongrel?) to view/play with my system before I release it into production. From my default installation I can play with it both others can't seem to access it - not even from say http://:3000, which works from local - so I'm a bit confused.
Advice on how best to deploy it onto a production webserver assuming I deploy onto Linux. What webserver should I use and are there instructions?
Thanks in advance. Networking and webservers are NOT a strong suite :-)
Cheers
B
The development Mongrel is by default only accessible through localhost. In order to be visible from the outside you need to ask it to bind to your external IP address. Assuming your IP address is 10.0.0.5, you need to do this:
script/server -b 10.0.0.5
For deployment on Linux, the easiest way is perhaps using Passenger, and either Apache or nginx for a web server, whichever you're most comfortable with (if you have no preference, go with Apache). Documentation can be found here.
Why can't others access it via http://your.ip:3000/? ./script/server mongrel listens on 0.0.0.0 by default. 0.0.0.0 stands for listening on every interface in Linux.
As Rails applications default run on port 3000, would it be possible to start the application on port 80? Is it really required to have a fastcgi/mod_proxy enabled web server in front? My users won't be more than three at a time. If so, how would I be able to do so?
Thanks!
WARNING: This is not a general purpose description of how to set up a Ruby on Rails production environment. If you want to host a public Rails website, I highly recommend using Apache with Passenger, which is very easy to install and maintain.
From your description, it sounds like you are working with some kind of internal application to be used within your office or similar. For this particular purpose, hosting the application via Webrick (the built-in web server in Rails) might be a sufficient solution. To do this, start the server with a -p command line argument: ruby script/server -p 80
This obviously requires port 80 to be available (not bound by some other web server). Also, on most operating systems, you will need root privileges to bind to port 80. The security implications of running a web site as root are serious, so you really only want to do this if you know what you are doing, and are absolutely sure that the server is completely shielded from the Internet.
If there isn't some specific reason you're trying to run with mongrel, I would recommend using Phusion Passenger as it is significantly easier to configure and support than mod_proxy+mongrel.
mongrel - http://github.com/fauna/mongrel
thin - http://code.macournoyer.com/thin/