Installation of a Rails platform

• Note: this doc was originally published as ​http://bearstech.com/doc/installation-rails-locale

This is a short documentation which explains how to set up a Rails environment in a Unix "home". Expected usage is to have one account per application: it makes it very easy to maintain parallel environmenens with their own Gems and such, while sharing a server and the basic infrastructure like the Ruby interpreter and core libs.

1. Install a local version of Gem

Because its repository and install paths are setup at install time, we need to install and build it with GEM_HOME already set into our user account.

Recommended: 'apt-get remove rake rubygems libgems-ruby1.8'

# su - ror
$ cd ~
$ mkdir gem
$ export GEM_HOME=~/gem
$ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/57643/rubygems-1.3.4.tgz
$ tar xzf rubygems-1.3.4.tgz
$ cd rubygems-1.3.4
$ ruby1.8 setup.rb --prefix=~

Set up a useful symlink:

cd ~/bin
ln -s gem1.8 gem

In ~/.bashrc (and no other file), add:

export EDITOR=vim
alias less='less -R'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
alias ll='ls --color=auto -la'
alias reload='thin restart -C ~/site/prod/config/thin.yml'
alias maintenance='touch ~/site/prod/public/maintenance/ENGAGED'
alias no_maintenance='rm ~/site/prod/public/maintenance/ENGAGED'
alias sc='./script/console'

source ~/ruby-env

Create a ~/ruby-env file (which can be sourced from your cronjobs):

#!/bin/sh
export GEM_HOME=~/gem
export RUBYLIB=~/lib
export PATH=~/bin:$GEM_HOME/bin:$PATH
if [ -z "$LANG" ]; then
  export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
fi

# Comment this if you're not on a production environment!
export RAILS_ENV=production

Create a ~/.gemrc file:

---
:sources:
- http://gems.rubyforge.org
- http://gems.github.com
:bulk_threshold: 1000
:update_sources: true
:verbose: true
:backtrace: false
:benchmark: false
gem: --no-ri --no-rdoc

And finally, a ~/.vimrc config:

set bg=dark
set bs=2
set dir-=.
set ek
set ff=unix
set is
set ls=2
set lz
set nojs
set pt=<F11>
set wildmenu
set wildignore+=*.o,*.so,*.a,.svn,*.pyc

...and log in again.

2. Install a local Rails (deprecated, let the devs choose which version they want)

This is pure Ruby code, nothing special - it should just work.

$ gem install rails --no-rdoc --no-ri

3. Install a local Mongrel (deprecated, let the devs choose which server they want, usually "thin")

This boring part has some C blurbs. So:

$ sudo aptitude install build-essential ruby1.8-dev
$ gem install mongrel

4. Install an init script

For instance as /etc/init.d/thin, then run update-rc.d thin defaults 99 to insert it in the sysv boot sequence.

Source code for such a script:

#! /bin/bash

# thind init script (c) 2009 Bearstech - http://bearstech.com
# Author: Lucas Fernandez <lfernandez@bearstech.com>

# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

# Do NOT "set -e"

# PATH should only include /usr/* if it runs after the mountnfs.sh script
# PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/home/ror/bin:/home/ror/gem/bin:/home/ror/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
DESC="Ruby on Rails webserver"
NAME="thin"
DAEMON=/home/ror/gem/bin/$NAME
DAEMON_ARGS="-C /home/ror/http/thin.conf"
PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
SCRIPTNAME=/home/ror/init.d/thind

#
# Function that starts the daemon/service
#
do_start()
{
  if [ "x`pgrep ^${NAME}$ | head -n1`" != "x" ] ; then
    echo -e "\n \\033[0;31;40mErr :\\033[0;39m $NAME already running"
    exit 1
  else
	$DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS start
  fi
}

#
# Function that stops the daemon/service
#
do_stop()
{
  if [ "x`pgrep ^${NAME}$ | head -n1`" == "x" ] ; then
    echo -e "\\033[0;31;40mErr :\\033[0;39m $NAME already stop"
    exit 1
  fi

  $DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS stop
}

#
# Function that restart the daemon/service
#
do_restart()
{
  $DAEMON $DAEMON_ARGS restart
}

#
# Function that check daemon/service status
#
do_check_status() {
  if [ "x`pgrep ^${NAME}$ | head -n1`" != "x" ] ; then
    echo "Thin is running PID : "
    pgrep ^${NAME}$
	return 1
  else
    echo "Thin is not running"
    return 2
  fi
}

case "$1" in
  start)
    echo "Starting $NAME ..."
	do_start
    ;;
  stop)
    echo "Stopping $NAME ..."
	do_stop
    ;;
  restart|force-reload)
    echo "Restarting $NAME ..."
    do_restart
    ;;
  status)
	do_check_status
    ;;
  *)
	echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload|status}" >&2
	exit 3
	;;
esac