Deploying Ruby on Rails 2.3.8 on WebFaction with Nginx, Passenger, Git and Capistrano

Sunday 18 July 2010

Create a Rails 2.3.8 app in your WebFaction control panel:

Create your WebFaction account and a new Rails 2.3.8 app. If you require a MySQL or Postgres database, you can add it through the control panel, then update your app’s config/database.yml file with the production database details.

Get Git Going

• Go to the Git site and copy a link to the latest release, then log in to your WebFaction account using SSH and get it (adjust your actions according to the release): wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.1.1.tar.bz2
• Untar Git: tar -xvjf git-1.7.1.1.tar.bz2
• Change into the Git directory: cd git-1.7.1.1
• Configure it: ./configure --prefix=$HOME
• Make it and install it: make && make install
• Now test to make sure everything worked by getting the Git version: git version
• Now go to your home folder, and create a place for your repository on the server:

  cd
  mkdir git

• Everything going well so far? Great… next step

Copy Up Your App

• Start by creating a zip archive of your app on your local machine.
• Copy your app up to WebFaction: scp /path/to/myapp.zip username@domain:~/git/
• Go back to your WebFaction account and unzip the app

  cd git
  unzip myapp.zip
  cd myapp
  

Create The Git Repo

• Create a .gitignore file in your app root to make sure you don’t have any unwanted junk in there, mine looks like this:

  log/*.log
  tmp/**/*
  .DS_Store
  doc/api
  doc/app
  coverage
  db/*.sqlite3
  public/system/**/*
  public/javascripts/cache/**/*
  public/stylesheets/cache/**/*

• Now initialize a new Git repository:

  git init
  git add .
  git commit -a -m "Initial commit."

• I usually go into the Git repo and modify the .git/config file to avoid hassles:

  [core]
          repositoryformatversion = 0
          filemode = true
          bare = true
          logallrefupdates = true
  

Bash Profile

Edit your .bashrc and .bash_profile located at /home/me/.bashrc and .bash_profile:

• .bashrc:

  # .bashrc
  
  # Source global definitions
  if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
      . /etc/bashrc
  fi
  ME=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/bin/
  RAKE=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/bin/rake
  GIT=/home/#{me}/git-1.7.1.1/
  PATH=$ME:$RAKE:$PATH:$HOME/bin:$GIT
  export PATH
  export GEM_PATH=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/gems/bin 
  export GEM_HOME=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/gems 
  

• .bash_profile

  # .bash_profile
  
  # Get the aliases and functions
  if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
      . ~/.bashrc
  fi
  
  # User specific environment and startup programs
  ME=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/bin/
  GIT=/home/#{me}/git-1.7.1.1/
  RAKE=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/bin/rake
  PATH=$ME:$RAKE:$PATH:$HOME/bin:$GIT
  export PATH
  
  export GEM_PATH=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/gems/bin 
  export GEM_HOME=/home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/gems 
  

Update your nginx conf file, located at /home/me/webapps/myapp/nginx/conf/nginx.conf:

• First Update the app root:

  root /home/#{me}/webapps/#{my_app}/#{myapp}/current/public;

• Then you may want to add some Passenger settings to help keep your app alive and avoid long startup times:

  rails_appspawner_idletime 0;
  rails_frameworkspawner_idletime 0;
  passenger_poolidle_time 1000;
  

Clone and Deploy The Application

• Back on your local machine’s command line, clone your WebFaction Git repo, and Capify it:

  git clone me@domain:/home/me/git/myapp myapp
  cd /path/to/myapp
  capify .

• Create a Capistrano deploy recipe:
• Commit your Capistrano recipe:

  git add .
  git commit -a -m "Capified."
  git push
  

• Deploy the app:

  cap deploy:setup
  cap deploy:update
  

Everything should be working, but don’t forget to install any required gems.

After you’ve deployed once, in future you can run cap deploy, and/or cap deploy:migrations when you’ve added migration files.