The goal of this article is to create a "Production-Quality" Rails Server. Thus, the best possible technologies (strictly my opinion) have been selected at the time of this writing to achieve this goal.

Unlike other developers, I prefer to install my Rails Applications under Web Subdirectories, such as http://www.not404.com/MyRailsApp, instead of running it as a Root Application of a Web Root, such as http://MyRailsApp.not404.com/. These instructions are geared for how I lay things out, but will let you know what to adjust in order to run your Rails Apps as traditional Web-Root Applications.

You may also notice that these instructions are SQLite3-oriented. This is intentional. IMHO, it's better to use the simplest-case database to prove that everything else is properly stitched together. Then, once you're satisfied that everything is properly locked down and performance-tuned, you can focus your attention on tying your Rails Application to a real database.

• Fedora Core (6 or later)
• Ruby on Rails
• Mongrel Ruby Application Server
• Lighttpd Web Server
• Various Plumbing and Configuration "Best Practices" to stitch it all together. :-)

Related Articles:

• How To Connect To SQL2005 From Ruby On Rails on Fedora Core 6 (Linux)

Update For Fedora 8

The Ruby on Rails support in Fedora 8 is superb, and there are RPMs that handle everything about this configuration.  Note that the most common Ruby Gems are available as rubygem-* in the Yum Repositories.  (You can do a yum search rubygem for a complete list of Fedora-Supplied Ruby Gems).

Thus, through Fedora 8's Yum support, you can install Rails, Lighttpd, and Mongrel in one command:

yum install ruby ruby-devel rubygem-rails rubygem-mongrel lighttpd lighttpd-fastcgi 

The following instructions are specific to Fedora Core 6.  If you're using Fedora 8, you can skim through most of the Installation Procedures, but pay attention to the Configuration Procedures -- particularly for the Lighttpd Proxy and the Mongrel Cluster as a Startup Service.

Fedora Core 6: The Base Server

• Install Fedora Core 6. Enable the "Development Tools" group in the initial setup screens.
• do a yum -y update to get the latest update patches
• Optionally, do a visudo to configure "sudo" access.

If you missed the "Development Tools" checkbox, do a yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools" to install it now. You'll need the GCC compiler to build some Ruby Gems, it makes sense to have it ready here. After everything's configured, you may decide to do a yum -y groupremove "Development Tools" to remove the C compiler and other tools from your production box.

Ruby On Rails

• yum -y install ruby ruby-devel ruby-irb ruby-libs ruby-rdoc ruby-ri rubygems
• yum -y install ruby-sqlite3
• Now, we can use Gem to get the latest Rails Framework:
  • sudo gem install rails --include-dependencies

Optional (But Recommended) Yum Packages

• ruby-sqlite3
• ruby-mysql
• ruby-postgres

• ruby-clearsilver
• ruby-racc
• subversion-ruby
• ruby-docs

Mongrel Ruby Application Server

• sudo gem install gem_plugin daemons capistrano --include-dependencies
• sudo gem install mongrel mongrel_cluster railsmachine --include-dependencies
• sudo /usr/sbin/adduser -r mongrel (This creates a mongrel user, as suggested in Bryan Thompson's Blog).

As I've mentioned before, I prefer to install my Rails Applications under Web Subdirectories, such as http://www.not404.com/MyRailsApp.  Most of the other deployment tutorials and strategies advocate installing the Rails Application under the Web Root directory: http://MyRailsApp.not404.com/.

To correctly handle Rails Applications running under Web Subdirectories , we need to use Mongrel's --prefix support, recently added in Mongrel Cluster 0.2.1. At this writing though, Mongrel Cluster 0.2.1 is still a pre-release version, so it needs to be installed from their "trunk" repository, instead of from the standard Gem Repositories.

To get the Pre-Release version of Mongrel Cluster to let us run Rails Applications under Web Subdirectories, run this command:

• sudo gem install mongrel_cluster --source http://railsmachine.rubyforge.org/releases/
• sudo gem cleanup

Test Mongrel and Rails As a Non-Root User

• cd ~
• rails testapp
• cd testapp
• mongrel_rails start

Launch firefox, and go to http://localhost:3000 -- you should get the "Welcome Aboard" web page. You can now stop Mongrel, so we can configure it as a Service.

Configure Mongrel for Production

Because everyone lays out their Production Directories differently, I'll just call the Production Root Directory $PRODUCTION in this article, and I'll assume that Application Instances are in subdirectories, which I'll call $APP_ROOT. For my Production Servers, I like to lay things out this way -- it makes things easier to create master startup scripts that can iterate over all $APP_ROOT instances in $PRODUCTION. I also configure $APP_PORT to a unique service port for each instance on my Production Server.

Please substitute my variables with your own directory structures as appropriate.

If you're following along with my layout, now's a good time to copy ~/testapp to your Production Area:

• sudo mv ~/testapp /$PRODUCTION
• sudo chown -R mongrel:mongrel /$PRODUCTION/testapp

Install Mongrel_Cluster a Startup Service

• sudo mkdir /etc/mongrel_cluster
• find /usr/lib/ruby -type f -name "mongrel_cluster" -exec sudo cp -ap {} /etc/init.d/ \;
• sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster
• sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 345 mongrel_cluster on

Install Mongrel_Cluster Controller Tool

(I've not found a use for this, but since others think it's important enough to document, I've put it in . . .)

• find /usr/lib/ruby -type f -name "mongrel_cluster_ctl" -exec sudo ln -s {} /usr/bin; \;

Configure Mongrel_Cluster For Each Application Instance

(NOTE: The following hunk is a pseudo-script, just to give you an idea of what I do on my machines. It's not a complete bash script)

• export APP_PORT=8000 # Change this as needed
• export APP_NODES=3 # Change this as needed
• cd $PRODUCTION/$APP_ROOT
• sudo mongrel_rails cluster::configure -e production -c $PRODUCTION/$APP_ROOT -p $APP_PORT -N $APP_NODES -a 127.0.0.1 --user mongrel --group mongrel --prefix /$APP_ROOT
• sudo ln -s $PRODUCTION/$APP_ROOT/config/mongrel_cluster.yml /etc/mongrel_cluster/$APP_ROOT.yml

Note that my instructions above include the new --prefix $APP_ROOT command, which allows Mongrel Applications to properly "ignore" the prefix. Prior to this Mongrel Enhancement, we needed to configure Apache or Lighttpd to strip out this prefix.

If you're running your Rails Apps as the web server root application, remove the --prefix /$APP_ROOT additions.

Lighttpd Web Server 

At this point, you now have your Mongrel-Rails Applications properly configured to run as Startup Services. (They'll automatically startup when your machine reboots). Now it's time to stitch together the Lighttpd Web Server as our front-end.

Install Lighttpd

• sudo yum -y install lighttpd
• sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 345 lighttpd on

Configure Lighttpd For Mongrel

• sudo nano /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Uncomment the mod_proxy module, as we'll need that to dispatch requests to our Mongrel Serves.

Additional (Recommended) Modules For Lighttpd

Out of the Box, Fedora's Lighttpd configuration is rather light. You may want to uncomment these additional modules to get more functionality.

• mod_rewrite
• mod_redirect
• mod_access
• mod_accesslog
• mod_compress

Configure A Mongrel-Cluster In Lighttpd

Add a hunk of code similar to the following to the tail end of /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf:

proxy.balance = "fair"
proxy.server  = ( "/testapp" =>
  ( ( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 8001 ),
    ( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 8002 ),
    ( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 8003 ) ) )

You will need to change the /testapp prefix to the name of your Rails Application. Remember that $APP_ROOT variable that we passed to Mongrel as --prefix? Yes, the value you input here must match that --prefix value. Obviously, you will also need to change the Mongrel Server-Ports to match your $APP_PORT, up to $APP_NODES instances for this server pool.

If you are running your apps in the root-directory, change "/testapp" to "/"

That should be it! Now you can fire up the whole shebang and cross your fingers:

• sudo service mongrel_cluster start
• sudo service lighttpd start

Various Plumbing and Best-Practices

(more to come)

Additional References

This article couldn't have been put together without referring to older documentation:

• Official Mongrel FAQ
• Official Mongrel-Lighttpd HOWTO
• Apache 2.2 + Mongrel on Fedora Core 5 installation guide
• Five-Minute Rails Application Deployment
• Time For A Grown-Up Server: Rails, Mongrel, Apache, Capistrano and You
• Installing Ruby on Rails on Fedora Core 5
• Installing Ruby on Rails with Lighttpd and MySQL on Fedora Core 4
• Rails on Fedora
• Mongrel Cluster 0.2.1 pre-release Announcement

Contacting The Author

If you need additional Ruby on Fedora support, or are looking to hire an experienced Ruby On Rails Developer, feel free to contact me (Laurence Lee) as username lalee_net, at yahoo.com.

User Comments and Feedback

 

Comment by Aaron on Thu Mar 29 16:25:33 2007

I actually wrote the BryanThompsons blog article, you have a great howto here, good work!

Comment by anonymous on Thu May 3 12:04:27 2007

Thanks for the HOWTO... worked like a charm for my very first Rails installation :-)

Comment by Sam Pierson on Thu Jun 14 14:46:34 2007

In section: Install Mongrel_Cluster a Startup Service I think you mean:

• sudo mkdir /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster

Comment by lalee on Wed Jun 20 17:13:44 2007

Sam,

It's a matter of personal preference, I suppose. I create /etc/mongrel_cluster as a directory that stores all of the Mongrel Configuration Files deployed across all applications. For me, it makes more logical sense to keep it as a subdirectory of /etc (the system-wide configuration directory), rather than in /etc/init.d (the system-wide configuration-scripts repository).

As far as I can tell in Fedora's layout, most of the services have configuration directories directly under /etc, too, so at least I'm being consistent with what's already in place. :-)

Comment by anonymous on Sat Oct 27 22:59:10 2007

The biggest problem I have with FC6 is that rails for the x64 version is still stuck at 1.8.5. This is inadequate if you use certain methods ( Time.to_datetime for example). I'm trying to manually build Ruby 1.8.6 and rubygems, but the rubygems installer complains about missing zlib.. any thoughts?

Comment by michael on Sat Oct 27 23:00:10 2007

previous should have read "ruby for the x64 version".

Comment by lalee on Sun Oct 28 01:37:06 2007

You might want to upgrade to Fedora7, or wait to grab Fedora8 since it's scheduled for release on November 8. Fedora7-x64 has Ruby 1.8.6 available.

Comment by Lou Arnold on Sun Nov 18 09:19:21 2007

This was quite good, but for us Ruby first timers, it might be nice to give somewhat more: 1) Folders to change to before executing commands. 2) For optional packages/utilities - what are they/why or when would you need them. 3) Some servers - Mongrel in particular - would go on a second server computer. It would be nice to have some sense of how those are configured to work with Ruby and Rails on a development computer.

Comment by lalee on Mon Nov 19 13:19:11 2007

Thanks for the feedback, Lou. I have been considering an overhaul of this article for Fedora8 for quite some time, and those suggestions will help take it into a new direction.

Best Regards,
Laurence Lee