Is there an easy way to have backgroundrb started with server? - ruby-on-rails

Is there an easy way to have backgroundrb started (restarted) when the server reboots?
Ex. What if your hosting use mongrel cluster and you have no access to it (except start/stop)
One of solution i found on forums is code snippet in backgroundrb plugin with check for PID exist (if not exist start with exec or system) etc.
Just your ideas.

My solution:
in script/server before rails run add system call for bacgroundrb
# AUTO START BACKGROUDRB
#stop if already runing
system( "./script/backgroundrb stop")
#start
system( "./script/backgroundrb start")

Related

Ruby on Rails config change while server is running?

Hi I'm new to Ruby on Rails. I have installed the Testia Tarantula application and am trying to read up on Ruby.
My question is how do I start/stop the server.
For example: I want to change the Admin email, so I execute the following command to change the configuration of the app:
RAILS_ENV=production rake db:config:app
But is this command ok to execute while the server is running, it has 'db' in the command which is what would warn me that I shouldn't run it while the server is up. Anyone have some helpful tips for learning Ruby on Rails server app management?
Welcome to Rails!
You can run rake db:xxxxx while the server is running and it won't hurt anything. However I usually stop my server, run my rake command and then start it back up to ensure that all changes will be picked up. If running in production, I would think you may want to restart the server just to make sure. I believe that the schema is generated/updated upon server startup, just fyi.
As far as starting and stopping the server, if you are attached to it you can just use ctrl + c. If it is detached, you can search for the pid and then kill -9 .
Running rake db:anything will load rails on its own. It doesn't matter if you have a server up or not. This will happen in the background. Think of it as the same as running a sql script while the server is running. It's a separate process.

start thinking sphinx on rails server startup

I have a chain of nginx + passenger for my rails app.
Now after each server restart i need to write in terminal in project folder
rake ts:start
but how can i automatize it?
So that after each server restart thinking sphinx is automatically started without my command in terminal?
I use rails 3.2.8 and ubuntu 12.04.
I can not imagine what can i try ever, please help me.
How can i do this, give some advices?
What I did to solve the same problem:
In config/application.rb, add:
module Rails
def self.rake?
!!#rake
end
def self.rake=(value)
#rake = !!value
end
end
In Rakefile, add this line:
Rails.rake = true
Finally, in config/initializers/start_thinking_sphinx.rb put:
unless Rails.rake?
begin
# Prope ts connection
ThinkingSphinx.search "test", :populate => true
rescue Mysql2::Error => err
puts ">>> ThinkingSphinx is unavailable. Trying to start .."
MyApp::Application.load_tasks
Rake::Task['ts:start'].invoke
end
end
(Replace MyApp above with your app's name)
Seems to work so far, but if I encounter any issues I'll post back here.
Obviously, the above doesn't take care of monitoring that the server stays up. You might want to do that separately. Or an alternative could be to manage the service with Upstart.
If you are using the excellent whenever gem to manage your crontab, you can just put
every :reboot do
rake "ts:start"
end
in your schedule.rb and it seems to work great. I just tested on an EC2 instance running Ubuntu 14.04.
There's two options I can think of.
You could look at how Ubuntu manages start-up scripts and add one for this (perhaps in /etc/init?).
You could set up monit or another monitoring tool and have it keep Sphinx running. Monit should boot automatically when your server restarts, and so it should ensure Sphinx (and anything else it's tracking) is running.
The catch with Monit and other such tools is that when you deliberately stop Sphinx (say, to update configuration structure and corresponding index changes), it might start it up again before it's appropriate. So I think you should start with the first of these two options - I just don't know a great deal about the finer points of that approach.
I followed #pat's suggestion and wrote a script to start ThinkingSphinx whenever the server boots up. You can see it as a gist -
https://gist.github.com/declan/4b7cc4fb4926df16f54c
We're using Capistrano for deployment to Ubuntu 14.04, and you may need to modify the path and user name to match your server setup. Otherwise, all you need to do is
Put this script into /etc/init.d/thinking_sphinx
Confirm that the script works: calling /etc/init.d/thinking_sphinx start on the command line should start ThinkingSphinx for your app, and /etc/init.d/thinking_sphinx stop should stop it
Tell Ubuntu to run this script automatically on startup: update-rc.d thinking_sphinx defaults
There's a good post on debian-administration.org called making scripts run at boot time that has more details.

Can I automatically start a daemon in a Rails 2.3.11 application?

In the development environment i use the following command to start a daemon after starting the server:
RAILS_ENV=development lib/daemons/mailer_ctl start
In the production environment, from the application directory, i would use:
lib/daemons/mailer_ctl start
Can i change the development.rb and production.rb files so the daemon would automatically be started? If not, is there another way to do this?
I recommend on your production server you use god (or something similar) to watch for the existing of a process, and start it if it does not exist
http://god.rubyforge.org/
Monit is an alternative -- here's a good SO question on monit vs god

Start up required additional services (resque, redis) with `rails server` command

I would like my development environment for Rails to automatically start redis and resque (and potentially in other projects, mongod, mysql-server etc.) for me, in the following cases:
When starting up the development server rails server.
Additionally, it would be nice if the following cases detect already running services, and, if not running start them up too:
Rake rspec, rspec /spec, when running tests.
When starting up a rails console.
When shutting down the rails server, the started child-services should be shut down too.
What is the correct place for such additional startup scripts?
And how to avoid them being started in production too (where I run everything trough /etc/init.d services)?
A lot of these built-in tasks are available as rake tasks already.
You can create a master rake task that does it all.
For example, with resque, you get "rake resque:start" "rake resque:scheduler:start", etc.
You can create a generic "start" task that depends on the rest. Similarly, a "stop" task would shut everything down.
So you would do:
rake start # starts all associated processes
rake stop # stops them all
This is also very use to use from Capistrano, when you end up deploying your code somewhere else. Rake tasks are very easy to call from Capistrano.
I think it's really better to do that in some external script. Do it in your rails server command can be really annoying to anyone to try your code.
By example, in one year, a nez developper come to your project. He can be desoriented if your rails server commande launch a such of other application in background.
In same idea, if you do that you need maintain your code in your rails env. Can be a little tricky. Maintain an independant script can be more usefull.
You can add your script in script directory. That be a good pratice. But not when you launch a command with a manual who do not that.

Delayed Jobs on Rails 2: any better way to run workers?

I finally got the DelayedJobs plugin working for Rails 2, and it does indeed work fine...as long as I run:
rake jobs:work
Just like the readme says, to be fair.
BUT, this doesn't fit my requirements...what kind of background task requires you to have a shell open, and a command running? That'd be like having to say script/server to run my rails app, and never getting that -d option so it'll keep running even after I close my shell.
Is there ANY way to keep the workers getting processed in the backgroun, or in daemon mode, or whatever?
I had a ray of hope when I saw the
You can also run by writing a simple
#script/job_runner#, and invoking it
externally:
Line in the readme...but...that just does the exact same thing the rake task does, you just call it a different way.
What I want:
I want to start my rails app, then start whatever will process the workers, and have BOTH of them run invisibly in the background, without the need for me to babysit it and keep the shell that started it running.
(My server is something I SSH into, so I don't want to have that shell that SSHed into it running 24/7 (especially since I like to turn off my local computer now and again)).
Is there any way to acomplish this?
You can make any *nix command run on the background by appending an & to its end:
rake jobs:work &
Just make sure you exit the shell (or use the disown command) to detach the process from your login session... Otherwise, if your session disconnects, the processes you own will be killed with it.
Perhaps Beanstalkd and Stalker?
Beanstalk is a fast and easy way to queue background tasks. Stalker provides a nice wrapper interface for creating these jobs.
See the railscast on it for more information
Edit:
You could also run that rake task as a cronjob which would mean the server would run it periodically without you needing to be logged in
Use the collectiveidea fork of delayed_job... It's more actively developed and has support for running the jobs in a daemon without any extra messing about.
My capistrano script calls
RAILS_ENV=production script/delayed_job start

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