IT.Signals

Ok so I’ve finished my new Rails application and it’s now time to deploy, which has turned out to be somewhat more challenging than I thought. I’m deploying to a dedicated host running SuSe 9.3.

Installation check list:

1. Ruby
2. RubyGems
3. Rails
4. Mongrel + Mongrel Cluster
5. Nginx
6. Subversion
7. Capistrano

So roll up your sleeves and lets get into it.

1. Ruby

We will build Ruby using the latest source that we will download from the Ruby web site. Before we can do this we need to do some initial setup which includes making sure the required packages are installed that will allow us to build Ruby from source.

1. Start YAST, Software, Install and Remove Software

2. Check if Ruby is already installed, remove it if it is

3. Install the following packages if they have not already been installed

• zlib-devel
• make
• gcc 
• openssl
• openssl-devel

We then need to download the latest version (1.8.6-p110 at time of writing) of the Ruby source which can be downloaded from the official Ruby web site. Once you have downloaded the source we can start the build process.

Create a temporary directory where we can save the source and do all of our builds:
mkdir /tmp/build

Save the Ruby source file to the new directory and extract all of the files using 
tar zxvf ruby-1.8.6-p110.tar.gz

Change into the new source directory created by the extraction process 
cd ruby-1.8.6-p110

Setup our make files
./configure –prefix=/usr –with–openssl

Build Ruby
make

Install 
sudo make install

Check installation worked
ruby -v
which should return the Ruby version, e.g. ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-23 patchlevel 110) [i686-linux]

Remove the source files
rm -rf  ruby-1.8.6-p110

2. RubyGems

As we do not want to run Rails without installing RubyGems we need to download the source code and build it. Go to RubyForge and download the latest source code (0.9.4 at time of writing).

Save the source code in the temporary directory we created for Ruby above, i.e.
/tmp/build

Extract the source code using
tar zxvf rubygems-0.9.4.tgz

Change to the source directory created by the extraction process
cd rubygems-0.9.4

Perform the installation
sudo ruby ./setup.rb 

Remove source files
rm -rf rubygems-0.9.4

3. Rails

We can now install Rails which is something you may already have done in your development environment. Use the include-dependencies option to make sure all required files are installed.

Install Rails
sudo gem install rails –include-dependencies 

Verify the installation worked
rails -v
which returns the Rails version number for example Rails 1.2.5

4. Mongrel + Mongrel Cluster

To install Mongrel you will need to have Ruby 1.8.4 (or later) and RubyGems installed.

Install Mongrel
sudo gem install mongrel –include-dependencies

We will be using a cluster of three mongrel processes, you need to decide how many will be suitable for your application. To run a cluster of mongrel processes we need to install the mongrel_cluster gem, for details on this gem see the Mongrel web site.

Install the Mongrel Cluster gem
sudo gem install mongrel_cluster

Now that we have Mongrel and Mongrel Cluster installed we can continue with the configuration. I created a test Rails application to test my setup and make sure everything is working correctly. Later when I install my application I will make the required changes to these configs to work correctly with my "real" application.

Create the Rails application we will use for testing, I’m placing it in the apache root directory under a new apps directory. To find the document root go to /etc/apache2 and do a grep on documentroot, i.e. grep -i documentroot
cd /srv/www/htdocs/apps/
rails testapp

Create a user that will be used by the cluster
useradd -system mongrel

Create a cluster configuration file with three processes using ports 8001, 8002, and 8003. This will create a file in the config directory called mongrel_cluster.yml
cd /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp
mongrel_rails cluster::configure -p 8001 -e production -a 127.0.0.1 -N 3

I then modified the default configuration file to look like this:
—
user: mongrel
cwd: /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp
log_file: /var/log/mongrel.log
port: "8001"
environment: production
group: www
address: 127.0.0.1
pid_file: tmp/pids/mongrel.pid
servers: 3

Change permissions and owner of the Rails application. I am using the same group as used by my Apache system (see /etc/apache2/uid.conf) in my case it’s www
chown -R mongrel:www /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp

That takes care of the installation and configuration. We can test to make sure the cluster is working by starting it and connecting to it via a browser.

Start the cluster
cd /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp
mongrel_rails cluster::start

Check status of the cluster
cd /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp
mongrel_rails cluster::status

Run browser and connect to mongrel ports, you should see the standard Rails startup page
127.0.0.1:8001
127.0.0.1:8002
127.0.0.1:8003

To stop the cluster
cd /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp
mongrel_rails cluster::stop

To restart after a code change for example
cd /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp
mongrel_rails cluster::restart 

We need to setup the cluster so that it will be restarted when the server is rebooted. 

Create a new directory and create a new link to the mongrel cluster configuration file we created in the previous step
mkdir /etc/mongrel_cluster
ln -s /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp/config/mongrel_cluster.yml \
/etc/mongrel_cluster/testapp.yml

Copy the shell script supplied when the mongrel cluster gem was installed to the init.d directory. The shell script allows us to control the cluster including start, stop, status, and restart.
cp /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mongrel_cluster_1.0.5/resources/mongrel_cluster \
/etc/init.d/
chmod +x /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster
Usage: /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster <status|start|stop|restart>

Add the mongrel cluster as a service
Add the service: chkconfig mongrel_cluster 35
To check the service: chkconfig –list mongrel_cluster
To delete the service: chkconfig –del mongrel_cluster

There was one modification I had to make to the mongrel_cluster script to get it to work without any errors: 
Edit: /etc/init.d/mongrel_cluster
Change: chown $USER:$USER $PID_DIR
To: chown $USER:$GROUP $PID_DIR  

5. Nginx

Now that we have a working mongrel cluster running three mongrel processes how are we going to do the load balancing for these processes? I initially looked at using Apache 2.2 + mod_proxy_balancer but as SuSe 9.3 does not have any pre-built packages for 2.2 and I did not want to face the daunting task of building Apache myself I had to look at some alternatives.

I initially considered Pen and Pound but then came across Nginx which seems to have a lot of positive feedback from users. From what I have read it seems that it only requires a small amount memory and is as fast if not faster than mod_proxy_balancer. So I decided to give it a try and so far I’ve been very happy with it.

Before we can install nginx we need to install some packages required during the build process.

1. Start YAST, Software, Install and Remove Software

2. Install the following packages if they have not already been installed

• pcre
• pcre-devel
• pcre++-devel
• openssl
• openssl-devel

I found that these packages where not available on my installation CD so I used packages I found using rpmfind. I connected to this site from the SuSe machine using Konqueror, which when I clicked on the required package, the package information window was displayed allowing installation via YAST.

We can now build and install nginx, one point to note is that I’m using the latest snapshot which includes the upstream_fair changes as discussed in Ezra Zygmuntowicz article A Fair Balancer for Nginx and Mongrel 

Download snapshot from the link below, save the file in the /tmp/build directory
http://git.localdomain.pl/?p=nginx.git;a=shortlog;h=upstream_fair

Extract all files 
tar xzvf nginx-x.x.xx.tar.gz

Change to the extracted source directory
cd nginx-x.x.xx 

Setup our make files
./configure –with-http_ssl_module –prefix=/usr

Build nginx
make

Install
sudo make install

Check installation worked
nginx -v
which should return the nginx version, e.g. nginx version: nginx/0.5.32

Remove the source files
rm -rf  nginx-x.x.xx

Now we need to configure nginx to work with our Rails application, to do this I used a modified version of  Ezra Zygmuntowicz configuration file as described in the Nginx, my new favorite front end for mongrel cluster article. The other change I made to the configuration file was to include the performance improvement tip described in another of Ezra’s articles New Nginx conf with optimization.

Create the nginx.conf file in the test Rails application config directory

I changed the ownership and rights of this file to be the same as the other config files, i.e.
chmod 664 nginx.conf
chown mongrel:www nginx.conf

Test nginx config file
cd /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp
nginx -t -c config/nginx.conf 

Start nginx using the new config file
cd /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp
nginx -c config/nginx.conf

Stop nginx
ps aux | grep nginx
kill -15 <pid>
where <pid> is the pid of the master process

Test nginx is working correctly, start a browser and connect to nginx using the port you specified in the config file listen directive, i.e. listen 80;. You should see the standard Rails welcome page.

We now need to setup nginx to run as a service so that it will be restarted when the server is rebooted. To do this I modified a script that I found in a slicehost article Ubuntu LTS - adding an ngnix init script, here is my modified version which I’m sure can be improved on but for now it does what I need it to do. Create this script in the /etc/init.d directory in a file called nginx.

#! /bin/sh

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/nginx
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx
PIDFILE=/usr/logs/$NAME.pid
DAEMON_CONFIG=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

set -e

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: "       
        start-stop-daemon –start –quiet –pidfile $PIDFILE \
                –exec $DAEMON — -c $DAEMON_CONFIG
        echo " started"
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
 if [ -f $PIDFILE ]; then
                kill -15 `cat $PIDFILE 2>/dev/null`
        fi
        echo " stopped"
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
 if [ -f $PIDFILE ]; then
                kill -15 `cat $PIDFILE 2>/dev/null`
        fi
        sleep 1
        start-stop-daemon –start –quiet –pidfile $PIDFILE \
                –exec $DAEMON — -c $DAEMON_CONFIG
        echo " restarted"
        ;;
  status)
        echo "Status $DESC: "
        ps aux | grep -v grep | grep -v /bin/sh | grep $NAME
        ;;
  *)
        N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
        echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|status|restart}" >&2
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0

Steps to configure nginx as a service.

Create a new directory
mkdir /etc/nginx

Create a link to the nginx.conf file in the test Rails application config directory
ln -s /srv/www/htdocs/apps/testapp/config/nginx.conf \
/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Make the script executable
chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
Usage: /etc/init.d/nginx <status|start|stop|restart>

Add it as a service
Add the service: chkconfig nginx 35
To check the service: chkconfig –list nginx 
To delete the service: chkconfig –del nginx