Step-By-Step setup slicehost server (fedora) for rails application.

Bhushan Ahire — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:08:11 +0000

Hi all as I worked on setting up 4 to 5 servers, I thought its better to document the stuff so that I/developers can refer it, So I am documenting the step-by-step process for setting up the slicehost server for rails application work with nginx as a web server and mongrel as a rails application server.

Update

To update your system:

yum update

MySQL

to install mysql client and server apps

yum install mysql-server

The client package “mysql” will automatically be installed as a dependency.

Apache

yum install httpd

PHP5

To install php with soap, xml and mysql plugins:

yum install php php-soap php-xml php-mysql

some other php plugin utilities that are common:

yum install php-mbstring php-gd

Ruby

yum install ruby

Utilities

other useful utilities:

yum install nano wget elinks subversion vi

Nginx

install nginx web server:

yum install nginx

Mongrel Cluster

install mongrel_cluster:

gem install mongrel_cluster –include-dependencies

Setup your nginx configuration for your rails application and mongrel_cluster (proxy).

Below you found sample config file for nginx.conf (normally located in “/etc/nginx/conf/nginx.conf”)

user  deploy;
worker_processes  1;
error_log   logs/error.log debug;
#error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
#error_log  logs/error.log  info;
#pid        logs/nginx.pid;
events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}
http {
  include        conf/mime.types;
  default_type   application/octet-stream;
  sendfile        on;
  #tcp_nopush     on;
  keepalive_timeout  65;
  tcp_nodelay        on;
  gzip  on;
  gzip_min_length  1100;
  gzip_buffers     4 8k;
  gzip_types       text/plain;
  upstream mongrel {
    server 127.0.0.1:8000;
    server 127.0.0.1:8001;
  }
  server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  example.com;
    root /var/www/apps/example/current/public;
    index  index.html index.htm;
    location / {
      proxy_set_header  X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
      proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
      proxy_redirect false;
      if (-f $request_filename/index.html) {
        rewrite (.*) $1/index.html break;
      }
      if (-f $request_filename.html) {
        rewrite (.*) $1.html break;
      }
      if (!-f $request_filename) {
        proxy_pass http://mongrel;
        break;
      }
    }
    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   html;
    }
  }
}

Restart the nginx server:

/etc/init.d/nginx restart

Mongrel Configuration:

Now Go to the application directory and create a configuration for Mongrel:

mongrel_rails cluster::configure -e production -p 8000 -a 127.0.0.1 -N 2 -c /home/APP/production/APP/current

it will create the config/mongrel_cluster.yml file; basically you do not need to edit it.

You can test cluster with

To Start:

mongrel_rails cluster::start

To Stop:

mongrel_rails cluster::stop

To Restart:

mongrel_rails cluster::restart

Capistrano Configuration:

Then create a configuration for Capistrano:

cap –apply-to .

we need to modify the generated file config/deploy.rb:

require 'mongrel_cluster/recipes'

#you set the APP name with the cap command
set :application, "APP"
#a path to your repository
set :repository, "svn+ssh://USERNAME@SVN_SERVER/projects/#{application}/trunk"

role :web, "SERVER"
role :app, "SERVER"
role :db, "SERVER", :primary => true

#where to deploy (copy the files) on the server; I created a special user APP for the

application (if you do not like it, replace the /home/#{application} part with your path
set :deploy_to, "/home/#{application}/production/#{application}"
set :mongrel_conf, "#{current_path}/config/mongrel_cluster.yml"
#if the server login name is different to the development computer login name; in my case

the user name is the APP nameset :user, "APP"

Make necessary changes to the config/database.yml file.

Capistrano Deployment:

Create the basic structure on the server:

cap deploy:setup

For the first deployment you can use cold deploy:

cap cold_deploy

After that for next deployments you have to use:

cap deploy

You can also run migration from capistrano with:

cap deploy:migrate^*

^* Note: It wont work for me, it migrating to the previous release available in the releses folder, So I suggest you manually run migration on server.

That’s it, your server is ready to run.
Hope this documentation will be helpful to you, Enjoy .

How to use Google Apps mail configuration with rails application.

Bhushan Ahire — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:06:52 +0000

I am using google apps for my domain www.bhushangahire.com

For one of my rails application I am using this domain mail account setup for sending mails.
But I am not able to send the mail with the default smtp setings we use for sending mail.

So I search on net and I found the Goggle Apps consider its in different way. Which is TLS ans SSH service, which is not by default comes with the Action mailler.

ActionMailer can’t send emails using GMail out of the box. To add this functionality do the following configuration in your rails application:

Create the file lib/smtp_tls.rb

require "openssl"
require "net/smtp"

Net::SMTP.class_eval do
private
def do_start(helodomain, user, secret, authtype)
raise IOError, 'SMTP session already started' if @started
check_auth_args user, secret, authtype if user or secret

sock = timeout(@open_timeout) { TCPSocket.open(@address, @port) }
@socket = Net::InternetMessageIO.new(sock)
@socket.read_timeout = 60 #@read_timeout

check_response(critical { recv_response() })
do_helo(helodomain)

raise 'openssl library not installed' unless defined?(OpenSSL)
starttls
ssl = OpenSSL::SSL::SSLSocket.new(sock)
ssl.sync_close = true
ssl.connect
@socket = Net::InternetMessageIO.new(ssl)
@socket.read_timeout = 60 #@read_timeout
do_helo(helodomain)

authenticate user, secret, authtype if user
@started = true
ensure
unless @started
# authentication failed, cancel connection.
@socket.close if not @started and @socket and not @socket.closed?
@socket = nil
end
end

def do_helo(helodomain)
begin
if @esmtp
ehlo helodomain
else
helo helodomain
end
rescue Net::ProtocolError
if @esmtp
@esmtp = false
@error_occured = false
retry
end
raise
end
end

def starttls
getok('STARTTLS')
end

def quit
begin
getok('QUIT')
rescue EOFError
rescue OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError
end
end
end

Add the following lines to config/environment.rb and replace the values with the appropriate username and password:
```
require 'smtp_tls'
ActionMailer::Base.perform_deliveries = true
ActionMailer::Base.raise_delivery_errors = true
ActionMailer::Base.server_settings = {
:address => "smtp.gmail.com",
:port => 587,
:domain => "mydomain.com",
:authentication => :plain,
:user_name => "username@mydomain.com",
:password => "password"
}
```
^*Note:To work your domain with “mydomain.com” you have to configure your MX records to work Gmail mail sending functionality out of box.

Else you can use a temporary address @mydomain.com.test-google-a.com, I have not tested with this as I have already configure my MX records.

You can get more information on changing http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=33352.

Hope this information is useful to you.

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