Ruby on Rails and Lighttpd(SSL) Installation
The goal of this document is to explain how to set up Ruby on Rails on Lighttpd with SSL enabled and MySQL running in the background. It will cover the proper configuration of the database, as well as how to configure Rails for sending emails. Finally, it will walk through a sample Rails application that uses partials to render a basic website template, with separate header, content, and footer sections.
I. Check the system
Before installing, let's check that our system has the necessary tools so that the installation process can proceed smoothly. The system we'll be setting up should be similar to my own.$ echo $SHELL /bin/bash $ uname -a Linux dash.bryanhinton.com 2.6.18-8.1.10.el5 #1 SMP Thu Aug 30 20:43:15 EDT 2007 \ i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux $ echo $PATH /usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin: \ /usr/bin:/home/bryan/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin $ echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib:/usr/lib:/lib $ make -v GNU Make 3.81 $ autoconf -V autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.59 $ gcc -v Using built-in specs. Target: i386-redhat-linux Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info \ --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --enable-checking=release --with-system-zlib \ --enable-__cxa_atexit --disable-libunwind-exceptions \ --enable-libgcj-multifile --enable-languages=c,c++,objc,obj-c++,java,fortran,ada \ --enable-java-awt=gtk --disable-dssi --enable-plugin \ --with-java-home=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.4.2-gcj-1.4.2.0/jre \ --with-cpu=generic --host=i386-redhat-linux Thread model: posix gcc version 4.1.1 20070105 (Red Hat 4.1.1-52)
II. Check the host configuration on the network
Change the hostname.
$ su ******* # hostname WCLI404892341 # hostname dash.bryanhinton.com # hostname dash.bryanhinton.com
Now Open /etc/sysconfig/network and /etc/hosts and make sure that they look like the following:
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network NETWORKING=yes NETWORKING_IPV6=yes HOSTNAME=dash.bryanhinton.com # cat /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 74.53.242.146 dash.bryanhinton.com dash ::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
III. Install Ruby 1.8.6 patchlevel 110, RubyGems 0.9.5, and Ruby FastCGI Bindings
As of November 24, 2007, 1.8.6-p110 is the recommended, stable version and 0.9.5 is the recommended, stable version of RubyGems. RubyGems is the Ruby package management system and a gem is a packaged Ruby application or library.
# exit $ mkdir $HOME/src $ cd $HOME/src $ wget http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz $ tar -xzvf ruby-1.8.6.tar $ cd ruby-1.8.6 $ ./configure $ make $ su ******* # make install # exit $ which ruby /usr/local/bin/ruby $ ruby -v ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-23 patchlevel 110) [i686-linux] $ cd $HOME/src $ wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/28174/rubygems-0.9.5.tgz $ tar -xzvf rubygems-0.9.5.tgz $ cd rubygems-0.9.5 $ su ****** # ruby setup.rb # exit # gem -v 0.9.5 # gem install fcgi
IV. Install Rails
# gem install rails --include-dependencies
V. Install Lighttpd with SSL
# openssl version OpenSSL 0.9.8b 04 May 2006 # exit $ cd $HOME/src $ wget http://www.lighttpd.net/download/lighttpd-1.4.18.tar.gz $ tar -xzvf lighttpd-1.4.18.tar.gz $ cd lighttpd-1.4.18 $ ./configure --with-openssl --with-openssl-libs=/usr/lib/openssl ... ... ... Plugins: enabled: mod_access mod_accesslog mod_alias mod_auth mod_cgi mod_compress mod_dirlisting mod_evhost mod_expire mod_extforward mod_fastcgi mod_flv_streaming mod_indexfiles mod_proxy mod_redirect mod_rewrite mod_rrdtool mod_scgi mod_secdownload mod_setenv mod_simple_vhost mod_ssi mod_staticfile mod_status mod_trigger_b4_dl mod_userdir mod_usertrack mod_webdav disabled: mod_cml mod_magnet mod_mysql_vhost Features: enabled: auth-crypt compress-bzip2 compress-deflate compress-gzip large-files network-ipv6 network-openssl regex-conditionals disabled: auth-ldap stat-cache-fam storage-gdbm storage-memcache webdav-locks webdav-properties $ make $ su ****** # make install # mkdir /etc/lighttpd/ # cp doc/lighttpd.conf /etc/lighttpd/ # cp doc/rc.lighttpd /etc/init.d/lighttpd # chmod +x /etc/init.d/lighttpd # mkdir /var/www # mkdir /var/www/html # groupadd lighttpd # useradd -g lighttpd -d /var/www -s /bin/false lighttpd # chown -R lighttpd.lighttpd /var/www # chown -R lighttpd.lighttpd /var/log/lighttpd
Now let's Configure Lighttpd. As stated earlier, there is a public IP address bound to the network card. We are going to bind the lighttpd daemon to the public IP address on port 80 and port 443. This assumes that a correctly configured SSL certificate. The following lines in /etc/init.d/lighttpd.conf should look like the following:
server.username = "lighttpd"
server.groupname = "lighttpd"
accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log"
$HTTP["host"] =~ "bryanhinton\.com$" {
server.document-root = "/var/www/html/bryanhinton/public/"
accesslog.filename = "/var/www/html/bryanhinton/log/access.log"
server.indexfiles = ( "dispatch.fcgi", "index.html" )
server.error-handler-404 = "/dispatch.fcgi"
# rails stuff
#### fastcgi module
fastcgi.server = (
".fcgi" => (
"test" => (
"socket" => "/tmp/test1.socket",
"bin-path" => "/var/www/html/bryanhinton/public/dispatch.fcgi",
"min-procs" => 1,
"max_procs" => 2
)
)
)
}
$SERVER["socket"] == "74.53.242.146:443" {
ssl.engine = "enable"
ssl.pemfile = "/etc/lighttpd/ssl/bryanhinton.com/bryanhinton.pem"
server.name = "bryanhinton.com"
server.document-root = "/var/www/html/bryanhinton/public/"
}
VI. Start Lighttpd
# /etc/init.d/lighttpd start
VII. Configure a Rails Application
First, let's make sure our standard login ID is associated with the lighttpd group. Open /etc/groups and make sure that there is a line that looks like the following:
lighttpd:x:521:lighttpd,LOGIN_ID
Configure a Rails Application
$ cd /var/www/html $ rails bryanhinton $ cd bryanhinton $ ruby script/generate controller Content $ rm public/index.html
edit config/routes.rb
# add this to line 21 map.connect ':action', :controller => 'Content' # original line 24 #map.connect '', :controller => "welcome" # change to this on line 24 map.connect '', :controller => 'Content'
Setup smtp to send e-mail from Rails. Modify config/environments/development.rb so that it looks like the following:
config.action_mailer.raise_delivery_errors = false
config.action_mailer.delivery_method = :smtp
config.action_mailer.perform_deliveries = true
config.action_mailer.raise_delivery_errors = true
config.action_mailer.smtp_settings = {
:address => "smtphost.bryanhinton.com"
:port => 25,
:domain => "bryanhinton.com"
:authentication => :log
:user_name => "INSERT USERNAME HERE"
:password => "INSERT PASSWORD HERE"
}
IIX. Create a development database in MySQL and then Configure in Rails
$ mysqladmin -u myusername create bryanhinton_development -p $ gem install mysql
Edit config/database.yml and ensure that it looks similar to the following. We are only setting up a development database
development: adapter: mysql database: bryanhinton_development username: MY_MYSQL_USER_NAME password: MY_MYSQL_PASSWORD socket: /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
IX. Test the database connection
$ cd /var/www/html/bryanhinton $ rake db:migrate
X. Create site layout
$ cd /var/www/html/bryanhinton/app/views/layouts
Place the following lines in application.rhtml
<html> <body> <%= render :partial => "layouts/header" %> <%= render :partial => "layouts/leftnav" %> <%= render :partial => "layouts/rightnav" %> <%= yield :layout %> <%= render :partial => "layouts/footer" %> </body> </html>
Create the files that application.rhtml references
$ echo "My Header" > _header.rhtml $ echo "Left Menu" > _leftnav.rhtml $ echo "Right Col News" > _rightnav.rhtml $ echo "My Footer" > _footer.rhtml
XI. Create an index method in the Content controller
Place the following lines in /var/www/html/bryanhinton/app/controllers/content_controller.rb
class ContentController < ApplicationController def index end
XII. Create a view for the index method
Create a view for the index method called index.rhtml in /var/www/html/bryanhinton/app/views/content
$ cd /var/www/html/bryanhinton/app/views/content $ echo "Hello World!" > index.rhtml
XIII. Test the installation!
Open up a web browser and go to the site URL i.e. http://bryanhinton.com OR http://bryanhinton.com/index