I've received some really great guidance from users of this site, and I'm thinking some advanced Rails people could assist me in resolving the following problem.
I'm attempting to deploy a simple Rails application on a win32 server.
I've been carefully working through these instructions (see http://functionalelegant.blogspot.com/2008/05/deploying-rails-on-windows.html) for win32 Rails application deployment.
I started from a more-or-less clean windows install, then downloaded and installed
Ruby
LightTPD
Rails
Zed's SCGI Rails Runner
Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools
Ruby/DBI ADO package
After that, I've done the following:
I've commented out the line in the SCGI gem (which actually was causing trouble.)
I created the directory structure as suggested, with folders for logs.
I modified the scgi.yaml file and the Lighty config files to reflect my environmental settings.
After this, I wrote the batch scripts to start up Lighty and the SGCI process. They appear to run correctly. However, inside app-errors.log the following lines appear:
2009-05-15 16:48:06: (mod_scgi.c.2645) fcgi: got a FDEVENT_ERR. Don't know why.
2009-05-15 16:48:06: (mod_scgi.c.2469) emergency exit: scgi: connection-fd: 7 fcgi-fd: 8
Finally, when I navigate to http://localhost:xxxx/ I just see a blank page. Update: I just realized the blank page only appeared to be. Viewing the source revealed the following issue:
2C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:573:in `load'":C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:612:in `recv_request'":C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:911:in `recv_request'"?C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1530:in `init_with_client'"<C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1542:in `setup_message'"6C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1494:in `perform'"8C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1589:in `main_loop'"3C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1585:in `loop'"8C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1585:in `main_loop'"4C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1581:in `start'"8C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1581:in `main_loop'"2C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1430:in `run'"4C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1427:in `start'"2C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1427:in `run'"9C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1347:in `initialize'"2C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1627:in `new'"<C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/drb/drb.rb:1627:in `start_service'"MC:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/scgi_rails-0.4.3/lib/scgi.rb:402:in `run'"HC:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/scgi_rails-0.4.3/bin/scgi_service:61"*C:/Ruby/bin/scgi_service:19:in `load'" C:/Ruby/bin/scgi_service:19: mesg" too large packet
Note that 'ruby script/server' runs just fine, but the page then can't be seen externally.
Any ideas? Please let me know if anything jumps out at you.
I wrote the chapter for this in 'Deploying Rails Applications'. http://www.pragprog.com/titles/fr_deploy/deploying-rails-applications
Basically, you want mongrel, mongrel_service, and apache 2.2 with mod_proxy_balancer for windows.
You install 2 or more instances of your app with Mongrel running on separate ports. You set the services to autostart.
Then you set up apache to balance to them.
This is all outlined in the book, and I have some older articles on my website too - if you search for "deloying rails on windows" you'll find some pretty out of date stuff. The apache+mongrel way is the best way for Windows right now, and if you need additional help, feel free to let me know. I'd be glad to help.
Related
I've been building my first site using Rails, and I want to get it live. Up to now I've only ever put a site live by just dropping all the files onto my VPS via FTP, and I know that's not how it works with a Rails app.
What I don't know is where to even begin with making sure Rails is installed on my VPS (it's Linux based, I bought a package from Webfusion), and then how to deploy it and get it all running properly. My VPS has Plesk 10 installed on it, and from what I've read I need to install Rails alongside Plesk? I may have the wrong end of the stick, so don't hold back if I'm saying stupid things.
I realise this is a really green question to ask, but I've scoured forums looking for a solution I can understand and come up with nothing, so hoping someone here can help.
Thanks in advance!
I've never used a control panel like Plesk but I do have a VPS at linode.com. To get my rails sites up and running I got help from a smashingmagazine blog post and pro railscast episode. The railscast episode is not free but it has great info.
There are a lot of details with each step of getting a rails web server running on a VPS so please look at the blog or railscast video. But a high level overview of the steps is:
install rvm
install ruby and ruby gems
install rails
install a rails web server (a common option is passenger and nginx)
install a database (postgres is a common option)
capistrano for deployment
I wrote an ebook an this topic. After explaining how to set up a server from scratch it focuses on how to deploy an application manually, helping you to understand how this process works under the hood (I left automation out intentionally).
It covers a nginx/Unicorn/MySQL/rbenv setup. If you think that's something for you, you can get it here (it's free for people on my mailing list).
I just start RoR development for two weeks, It's pretty amazing programming language so far. It's impressing me so much so that I'm start to thinking about change the programming language of my client's project from PHP to RoR. But what I want to know is, is it possible to make a RoR web app looks like a Native App when using it in a local machine. By the term of Native app I mean ..
The user doesn't have to run script/server or rails server every time they starts their machine
Either access it by Web Browser or something else is fine.
Can be running with Window 7 or Window XP
Other recommendation are welcome. (Including, the reason not to use RoR to develop a local application)
I personally don't think there's anything ridiculous with wanting to deploy a Rails app as a desktop application but it's certainly not the easiest thing to do. Heres a list of what you're going to need:
a compiled distributable ruby interpreter
a distributable database
a script to bootstrap the whole thing( preferably that runs on the click of an icon or when system starts)
an installer
optionally:
write a simple shell in qt or java(possibly with the ruby bindings even) that handled starting and stopping the rails app, and provided a webframe for your customer to use instead of the standard web browser.
Here's a tutorial on deploying a rails app as a desktop app, though for debian, that should start you in the right direction. But your best bet for a quick gui application in ruby is shoes.
since rails is framework for web development there is no way to avoid starting rails server to show something on local machine. you might hide the fact that server is being started by running it as service without letting the user know about it but that's only as far as you can get.
so yes, it is possible to bundle your application into a "native app" but i'm afraid it will be extremely fragile as there are too many pieces that need to fit together: ruby itself, database to use, rails and all the other gems. big chance is you will have a gem that needs to be compiled and then you're in trouble.
bottom line: it's not worth it, either host your app or pick a better solution to develop something that runs only locally.
Maybe out of topic, but if you want to make native application, perhaps make native application? I mean, what's the purpose to develop a web application and then host it locally?
At least, you could consider using free hosts, such as heroku. http://your-project-name.heroku.com will grant you a 5mb database and 1 worker. It's free, will save you a lot of troubles and will make it easier for you to deploy newer version to your clients.
Just have them put a bookmark on their desktop if they want to double click to open application.
Maybe I am wrong but you seem to miss the fact that RoR is not a programming language. Ruby is a programming language and RoR is web-development framework. Anyway if you want to develop desktop applications, you can use Ruby with a framework such as Bowline (to keep the MVC spirit).
If you want a Web application, build a Web application. If you want to build a desktop application, try Monkeybars or Appcelerator.
Quite late for my answer but anyway I had the same problem and use the gem ocra to build an exe for windows.
It is also possible to generate a setup to install the program in the register.
It is still necessary to have a server started but the user has just to click on the exe program; A console is opened and give some instructions like 'after the start of the server, open a browser and go to localhost:3000; Ctrl + C to exit when you have finished.
It could be possible to have the server launched as a service but I think my users prefer to know if the program is running or not.
ocra is not really easy to set but eventually it works fine.
I have a client who wants to be able to add/delete/modify email addresses etc through cPanel, but I'd much rather add my own virtualhosts config for the actual site instead of a cPanel generated one. (A bunch of reasons. Don't want to install cPanel's ruby, would rather use passenger than mongrel, etc etc).
I don't have a whole lot of experience with cPanel, but by the look of things it takes over httpd.conf & auto-generates a virtualhost for the site - and overwrites stuff if I try to make any changes to the virtualhost settings. Is there a simple means to overwrite these settings without removing the rest of the site's functionality from cPanel?
Cheers...
You are correct in guessing that cPanel takes over a lot of things and auto-generates certain configs. To be honest, I have no idea what it does in regard to virtualhosts configs, but I do have recent experience in other areas which tends to confirm your suspicion:
So, to illustrate... cPanel comes stock with Rails 2.3.5. On the cPanel GemSet page, you can see Rails 3.0.6 shows as available, and even lets you install it via cPanel or SSH/BASH. This results in no error message at all (in fact, cPanel itself reports it as installed), but a rails --version command at SSH/BASH still shows version 2.3.5. After some research on on the cPanel forums, I discovered that this is because cPanel is hard coded for Mongrel support, and Mongrel doesn't support Rails past version 2.3.8. According to one of their moderators, they're looking at a possible Passenger solution, but it's still in the early stages of coding and months away.
So, while I realize my example doesn't specifically answer your question about virtualhosts, I think it confirms the validity of your suspicion that cPanel overrides certain settings, and may even be hard coded in ways that aren't immediately transparent...
I just look up at rails sources and find folder named "dispatches". There is four file in it. I want to know purpose of this files. I know I use this files on my production server, but I never used to think of their purpose. I know there is something about attaching Rails app to Apache server. On my production server rails appname command add this files to public folder automatically. Can I set up this behavior on my development machine?
The rails dispatcher is the entry point for a rails application and is used to bootstrap the environment.
They have a long history and in a lot of ways they are almost obsolete. In days gone by rails apps used to be powered using cgi or fastcgi, which was a way for the webserver to communicate with a rails process. The boot process would be initiated by dispatch.fcgi or dispatch.cgi. Nowadays people are more likely to use apache/nginx+passenger or apache/nginx+mongrel/thin. (Does anyone still use lighttpd?)
I'm a little fuzzy on how dispatch.rb is used, but I think it's used by upstream rails servers such as mongrel/thin to bootstrap the rails process. However, now that rails is rack compatible I'm not entirely sure if that has changed.
You don't need to pay the dispatch.* files any attention.
I hope this helps.
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.