How to deploy Ruby on Rails application via cPanel on shared host? - ruby-on-rails

I am in the process of learning Ruby on Rails and things have been going smoothly - up until I tried to deploy one of my test applications to my shared hosting account.
I use Host Gator and was able to successfully create a new Ruby on Rails app via cPanel and run it. The only problem is that when you create a new app this way, it populates its directory with a blank application - as would rails new app_name locally. When I delete the files and folders in this directory and replace them with my own, then attempt to run the app, cPanel says that it is running on the confirmation page but it never actually starts. I am not receiving any error messages either.
The host seemed rather stumped, stating that it should be a matter of deleting the initial files and folders and replacing them, then running. The app works fine locally so I do not think that it is a code issue. In my research I came across Passenger, although it is way over my head and it would appear that you really need to have total control over Apache to make it all work, including ssh.
If it makes any difference, the apps I made locally were put together using an installation of Rails Installer and are scaffolded. For testing I am using a bare minimum app with about three fields in the table.
What am I missing? Any help would be appreciated.

Maximum supported versions on 26/10/2013 are:
Ruby 1.8.7
RubyGems 1.8.25
Rails 2.3.18
Anything newer than that is a near guaranteed breakage and cPanel & WHM will be incapable of utilizing it in any way, shape, or form.
We can assist you with removing your existing Ruby on Rails installations and reverting them back to cPanel supported and sanctioned versions (Ruby 1.8, RubyGems 1.8, and Rails 2). That is the only thing we can do for you at this time.
If you want to use any versions newer than this, then you will be unable to use the cPanel & WHM interfaces or management tools for it -- they simply will not work. You will then have to manually manage your RoR install by yourself through command line exclusively. None of it would fall under the scope of cPanel support.

You can use http://ndeploy.in which is a third party plugin to integrate Rails Hosting via Phsuion Passenger in cPanel .

Just to let others who is using Cpanel with rails know.
I was able to use Cpanel to create a rails app, start it, and do the redirection all within Cpanel.
Nothing to modify or change. Quite straightforward for me.
So I guess it would be easier to do the development work straight on the server itself.
Have not tried to deploy a locally developed rails to shared server, or any per se. But I'm guessing we could create rails with Cpanel and replace the files in the directory generated.

Related

How to preview rails?

A website is shared to me on github. I'm working on it, but I can't do modifications on the actual site page yet. I need to see how the changes I make look like.
How can I have a live preview from rails? I was used to use xampp for the html/css stuff. Is there anything similar to that? If not, what are my choices?
The usual workflow is to setup a development environment on your local machine. The tools you will need for this are roughly:
git, to clone the github repository to your local machine
ruby (what version you need depends on the project), preferably you use a version manager such as rvm or rbenv
the correct database (again depending on your project, e.g. mysql or postgresql)
Once you have a ruby version installed, the first step will be to run 'bundle' to install all dependent ruby libraries. If that was successful you can configure your database in a file that either exists already or should be added: config/database.yml in which you configure the database connection.
You would use the command 'rake db:create db:migrate' to setup the database according to the projects migrations (=> specifying the database layout).
You might want to make yourself a bit familiar with ruby on rails, by following some good beginners tutorial. In the official rails guides that would be: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
It is not as 'out-of-the-box' as you might be used to from xampp , so there might be a bunch of pitfalls in the way (especially if you're running on windows and not linux / mac).
It is hard to give you a complete walkthrough without knowing the application and your system.
Depending on who's developing the application you might also ask them to provide you with a VM, e.g. using a tool called 'vagrant' to simplify the setup for you. You will still need to get more familiar with git, in case you aren't yet.
Hi you can first keep your apache on xampp running normal.
Go to command prompt if you are on windows. Go to the root of your application on your computer.
Then run
rails server
To open the server. If you done all that correctly it should open on your browser at
Localhost:3000
Then you can take it from there.

Which folder should i put into filezilla for ROR?

I have the following directory structure:
Which files must I drag into remote site of Filezilla for this ROR project?
When deploying a ROR project you should must use a VPN server. Have you used git for your project? Try to deploy in heroku first. To test your site and have a good practice when deploying rails.
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-rails4
The answer to the question would be: everything
But most likely, copying everything is not gonna make it run, here is why: Rails applications live in separate processes that have to be specifically maintained. On your dev machine, you do this with bundle exec rails server. This is a key difference to how the apache php module works for php apps: There the php interpreter is embedded within the apache process and therefore shares its life cycle automatically.
If you have control over the server you are deploying to, I recommend to start with the Phusion passenger apache module. It takes care of starting your rails processes as needed. In case you are using ubuntu 14:04, I can't recommend to just apt-get install libapche2-mod-passenger because I had many problems with it.
If the server is maintained by somebody else, I'd ask this someone for a solution.
I hope this helps.

Ruby on Rails app : from Heroku to a local server : what are the main steps?

My Ruby on Rails app (basically a commenting and voting system) has been deployed and currently runs on Heroku. I need to deploy it on a local server to ensure an optimal performance for a customer-organized event in a location where the internet bandwidth is too low and unpredictable to support the 100+ simultaneous users.
Just as Ruby, Rails, Javascript, JQuery, AJAX and CSSs were new to me a few months ago, going local is something new I need and am eager to learn (which should also allow me to deploy onto a dedicated or virtual private server if needed).
The following elements are obviously on the way : choosing an operating system, installing Ruby on Rails, a web server, a database engine and deploying my app code and data of course but I need help to make sure I do not forget anything and really understand how all of these elements must be tied together to get my app running.
At a reasonably high level, starting with my app code, could you please share your experience and tell me the steps I need to take from scratch to have it run on a local server ?
If you have a Mac, then you're already most of the way there. I do all of my Rails development on OS X. The steps from there are pretty easy.
Install Homebrew. This will help you quickly install any dependencies on the Mac that your Rails app needs (such as a database). Since you're on Heroku, you're likely using Postgres. So with Homebrew, you can install Postgres via brew install postgresql.
Copy your app code somewhere that makes sense. I have all my apps inside my ~/Projects directory.
Recommended: Install RVM. This will help keep gemsets unique to projects and keep your global gemset clean.
If you're using bundler, do bundle install within your app's directory.
Within the app directory, do: rake db:setup (Note: This may require prepending bundle exec)
Start your server. I tend to use Unicorn (see Heroku's deployment with Unicorn for even more details), so this would just be unicorn. Else, rails s works as well.
Those are the high level steps to get a local server running.

Deploying Ruby on Rails on Bluehost

Does anyone here know how to deploy a Ruby app on Bluehost? I am having quite a problem with this. Everytime I put my files inside the folder where my domain is pointing at, it always giving me a 403 error when I try to visit the website.
It's so painful. The instructions are incomplete. There are a bunch of things to get caught on like broken versions of sass, assets not pre-compiling, database configuring, how to restart the server, the root directory for passenger, etc.
I had problems with all of those things. I had to come here (Stack Overflow) to find most of the answers.
My site still runs in dev but not in production. The BH support is not much help. THey should call it BlueWordPressHost because that is who they are supporting.
Look in the <rails_root>/log directory for clues.
I'm not willing to switch over to Heroku and use postgres, I tried it but in reality your just dealing with another set of problems setting it up.
Give it a look -> Ruby on Rails Setup with Bluehost.
You cant just drop your Files in a folder.
Although Bluehost does a great job, i recommend you using Heroku for deploying Ruby on Rails Apps.
Deploying with Heroku is quite Easy -> Deploying with Git
I followed the instructions in the Ruby on Rails Setup as The Mini John referenced and it worked. They use Phusion Passenger to allow you to deploy any rack based application. However, I did have to manually install my gem dependencies. This is probably not a scalable solution for a production application with many users. However, if you already have bluehost as a hosting provider and are willing to maintain your own server and deal with possible latency issues and downtime, it may be worth it for you. Here is my Ruby on Rails 4.0 "Hello World" application deployed to bluehost: http://hello.getplanit.com.

deploy a ruby on rails application

I'm trying to deploy a ruby on rails application. It uses mysql for
a database. What I would like to do is distribute it as a windows
executable. It should be in such a way that the user can click on the
application and everything will load and a full screen browser window
will appear. This way the user will know nothing about it being a
browser and need no ruby components installed to run the application.
i am using 3.2.6 , ruby 1.9.3 , gem 1.8.24
Has anyone done anything like this?
Well, you can create a portable distribution - self-extracting archive that will extract your Rails application, pre-configured Ruby package with all necessary gems, and a bat-file, that will add Ruby to PATH variable, run Rails server and open browser window. Making a MySQL portable will definitely be a pain in the ass, I presume.
One of the key disadvantages is almost zero level compatibility - some gems will not work on certain systems, incompatible database drivers etc.
I once tried to do the same thing with Apache+MySQL+PHP, ended up using one shared PC as a server, distributing just browser launcher as a standalone app.
This might be a job for JRuby.
Try installing JRuby on your development machine and seeing whether your app runs in JRuby without any compatibility issues. These days that's reasonably likely.
Running your app in JRuby gives you the ability to package up all of Ruby, Rails, your gems and your application as a single .war file which can then be deployed within a java application server like Tomcat (using tools like warbler)
This still leaves you with the task of installing all the infrastructure (database, java, java application server etc).
I'ld try to prepackage a virtual linux box with all what your application needs and release that instead.
And, yes, I am very interested in the final answer as well :-)

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