Install Ruby Rails on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

It's getting easier to install Ruby on Rails all the time. I thought about skipping actually writing this tutorial until I heard that Phusion Passenger 2.2.0 supported Nginx. I was pretty psyched and so ran off to do an install with that new stack. If you want a head start on it or need a step by step tutorial then by all means click through for instructions.

Update: Version for Karmic Koala now posted.




Step 1: As usual, the first thing we'll want to do is make sure your version of Ubuntu is up to date.:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Step 2: We'll be installing some software that needs to be built so we'll need to get packages required for compiling. Luckily, you can type this single command and get everything you need:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Step 3: Once you've got the tools, it's time to install MySQL and Ruby. If you're using SQLite you may not need all this stuff. Otherwise, just copy and paste this command into your terminal if you're in a hurry.

sudo apt-get install ruby ri rdoc mysql-server libmysql-ruby ruby1.8-dev irb1.8 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysql-ruby1.8 libmysqlclient15off libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl libreadline-ruby1.8 libruby1.8 mysql-client-5.0 mysql-common mysql-server-5.0 rdoc1.8 ri1.8 ruby1.8 irb libopenssl-ruby libopenssl-ruby1.8 libhtml-template-perl mysql-server-core-5.0

If you hadn't previously installed MySQL you'll be asked to set a root password. You don't have to, of course (it will bug you no fewer than 3 times if you opt not to) but I strongly recommend it. You'll need this password when you populate your rails config/database.yml file so be sure not to forget it.


Step 4: Grab the latest ruby gems and install them. As always be sure to check rubyforge.org to make sure you're grabbing the latest one. As of this writing it's 1.3.4 but it never hurts to confirm.

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/57643/rubygems-1.3.4.tgz
tar xvzf rubygems-1.3.4.tgz
cd rubygems-1.3.4
sudo ruby setup.rb

Once it's done you can remove the .tgz file and erase the rubygems-1.3.4 directory too.


Step 5: On the command line, type gem -v. if you get this message we need to make some symlinks:

The program 'gem' can be found in the following packages:
 * rubygems1.8
 * rubygems1.9
Try: sudo apt-get install 
-bash: gem: command not found

Let's create those symlinks now:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/local/bin/gem
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ruby1.8 /usr/local/bin/ruby
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/rdoc1.8 /usr/local/bin/rdoc
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ri1.8 /usr/local/bin/ri
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/irb1.8 /usr/local/bin/irb

Step 6: Install Ruby on Rails! You can leave off the --no-rdoc and --no-ri switches if you're on a machine with plenty of ram. But just in case you've got a more modest setup (say 256MB or less) I'd just use the following:

sudo gem install rails --no-rdoc --no-ri

If you're just doing local development then you are basically done. You may want to install additional gems (such as mongrel). If you want to deploy Ruby on Rails onto a server then it's time to setup Nginx and Phusion.


Step 7: The folks responsible for Phusion (Hongli Lai & Ninh Bui) have done a remarkable job. They truly understand what it means to make using your product easy for customers. It's one reason we love Phusion. Nginx doesn't support loadable modules like Apache does, so Phusion will download, compile, and install it for you. What could be easier? To get started, let's download the packages we'll need:

sudo apt-get install libc6 libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libssl0.9.8 libssl-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev lsb-base

Step 8: We're going to create a directory for your application. In anticipation of Capistrano, let's put it in /var/www/myapp/current. Swap out the myapp with anything you like.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/myapp/current

If you've got an existing Rails application, it doesn't hurt to populate that directory now. Just make sure that the root to the public directory is /var/www/myapp/current/public. Don't forget to chown it for www-data:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/myapp/current/

Step 9: Now it's time to install Phusion Passenger and let it do it's magic. It's critical that you have Phusion Passenger 2.2.1 or greater installed. This may not work with 2.2.0.

sudo gem install passenger
sudo passenger-install-nginx-module

At this point you'll be greeted with two options. The first will allow Passenger to do all the work while the second, for advanced users, allows you to point Phusion to your pre-installed Nginx. We're going to make life easy on ourselves and choose option 1. I'd also recommend keeping the default path (/opt/nginx).

The Nginx configuration file (nginx.conf) file is in /opt/nginx/conf/ They've done you the favor of adding the lines you need to get going. Defining the configuration file is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but I've included a sample file which you can download. This file assumes your application is in /var/www/myapp/current.

Sample nginx.conf file for Ruby on Rails, Nginx, Phusion Passenger.


Step 10: Time to make some Nginx tweaks for Ubuntu/Debian. If you're used to running nginx as installed by Debian or Ubuntu then you might notice that you've lost the familiar way to start and stop nginx. Gone is /etc/init.d/nginx stop and /etc/init.d/nginx/start. To get it back, copy (or download) this into a file called nginx in /etc/init.d/ (as root)

#! /bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          nginx
# Required-Start:    $all
# Required-Stop:     $all
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: starts the nginx web server
# Description:       starts nginx using start-stop-daemon
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/opt/nginx/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
        . /etc/default/nginx
fi

set -e

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
                --exec $DAEMON
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile \
                /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON
        sleep 1
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \
                /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  reload)
          echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
          start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile     /opt/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
              --exec $DAEMON 
          echo "$NAME."
          ;;
      *)
            N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
            echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
            exit 1   
            ;;
    esac

    exit 0

Next, let's set the permissions and make nginx load on a reboot:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults

Now you should be able to start and stop nginx using the command you're used to:

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

Bonus step In case it's not already installed, let's grab the perquisites and then install the mysql gem. This will improve performance on your webserver:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev
sudo gem install mysql --no-rdoc --no-ri

Troubleshooting If things didn't go smoothly, here are some things to check:

1. There's an error log for nginx in /opt/nginx/logs/ Try looking to see if you get any hints there.

2. If you see a 403 forbidden error, make sure you have permissions set correctly. I'm running Nginx as www-data and I've set the group/user owners of my rails app to match using the chown -R www-data:www-data command. It doesn't hurt to confirm it.

3. Try running your rails app in development mode using the standard script/server. If it doesn't work there then it obviously won't work in production mode either

For help, you should check out the great railsforum or Mailing list front-end.
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