Ubuntu Intrepid - mod_rails installation
Phusion's Passenger (mod_rails) is an exciting development in serving your Ruby on Rails application with the Apache web server.
Incredibly simple to install and use, you can have a rails application up and running in no time. You don't have to worry about ports or setting up a proxy to another server.
Prerequisites
To get the most out of this article you need to have a couple of things preinstalled:
Firstly, you need Apache installed (see this article).
Secondly, you need ruby and rubygems installed (if not please see the Ruby on Rails article).
mod_rails installation
Passenger (mod_rails) is a rubygem.
We need to update the rubygems install:
sudo gem updateand then install passenger:
sudo gem install passengerOnce completed, we need to install the Apache2 module:
sudo passenger-install-apache2-moduleA dialogue opens in the terminal and starts with:
As suggested, press 'Enter/Return':
I deliberately left the Apache headers off the installation until this point as I want to demonstrate how easy the installation is.
The passenger (mod_rails) install has found a missing dependency — let's press 'Enter/Return':
How cool is that? It tells us what to do.
Well, let's go ahead and install the headers (we'll use aptitude though):
sudo aptitude install apache2-prefork-devOnce done, we can try the install again:
sudo passenger-install-apache2-moduleAll being well, the install will complete with instructions at the end letting us know we need to add some lines to the main Apache2 config file.
No problem:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.confNote: Passenger is an active gem and is being updated all the time. Rather than copy and paste the output I show below, please ensure you copy and paste the output from the install itself.
At the time of writing the article (well, updating it actually) I installed passenger v2.0.6 — you may have installed a later version.
So, for my v2.0.6 install, I added the following lines to my apache2.conf:
LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8Apache restart
Now all we need to do is restart Apache:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restartDone
That's all we need to do to install mod_rails onto our Slice.
The next article will show how to create a Ruby on Rails application and serve it using passenger — an incredibly easy process.
—
Mike
Article Comments:
Tom commented Fri Feb 06 12:59:32 UTC 2009:
Worth noting that if you are having trouble with installing sqlite 1.2.4 against ruby enterprise (and gem in general) you need to install the sqlite dev package;
sudo aptitude install libsqlite3-dev
Mike commented Thu Feb 12 20:47:16 UTC 2009:
Having trouble with Passenger not recognizing Rake (it says * Rake... not found). Although when I do sudo gem list, it is there.. not sure what is going on there?
Mike commented Thu Feb 12 21:22:04 UTC 2009:
Figured it out - be careful of your $PATH and how you symlink. I highly recommend Deploying Rails Application by Ezra Z. Goes great hand in hand with these tutorials if you are new to deploying rails apps.
ahmad commented Wed Mar 04 03:12:03 UTC 2009:
getting the following error when running the command: sudo gem install passenger
Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: Error installing passenger: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
ahmad commented Wed Mar 04 03:14:17 UTC 2009:
/usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb install passenger extconf.rb:1:in require: no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError) from extconf.rb:1
ahmad commented Wed Mar 04 03:15:29 UTC 2009:
Gem files will remain installed in /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fastthread-1.0.1 for inspection. Results logged to /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fastthread-1.0.1/ext/fastthread/gem_make.out
any ideas?
p.s sorry for the spam, but kept getting an error when posting comment
Eric Gruber commented Sat Mar 07 02:58:11 UTC 2009:
I'm also getting the same error message as ahmad:
Error: Error installing passenger ...
Eric commented Sun Mar 08 16:11:33 UTC 2009:
Here's a fix I found if gem install passenger doesn't work:
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/48622/passenger-2.0.6.tar.gz
tar xzvf passenger-2.0.6.tar.gz
./passenger-2.0.6/bin/passenger-install-apache2-module
If you're missing any programs dependent for Passenger to run, the shell will let you know. I had to install three additional packages, but installation instructions were included on the screen for every package.
You'll need to restart Apache when finished:
sudo apache2ctl -k restart
Additional documention on installing Passenger can be found at http://www.modrails.com/install.html
Lex Sheehan commented Thu May 07 20:12:12 UTC 2009:
If you get the following error message:
then run the following commands:
Now, you can finish your install:
Aaron Blohowiak commented Sat May 30 04:36:21 UTC 2009:
if none of the above work, try
and then
finally
and you should be done
Edgar O. Silva commented Wed Jul 01 04:43:16 UTC 2009:
Almost Everything seems to be installed correctly but when I try to run "sudo passenger-install-apache2-module" I receive the message "sudo: passenger-install-apache2-module: command not found",
Any Ideas Guys?
James commented Fri Jul 17 13:50:26 UTC 2009:
I had to do what Aaron suggested, then I got the same error as Edgar. Usually these tutorials are great :/
Andrew Short commented Fri Aug 14 11:35:21 UTC 2009:
If you're running into problems with the command not being found when using sudo (as you can't edit the PATH variable to add the rubygems bin) you can just use
which passenger-install-apache2-moduleto get the full path, then usesudo /full/path/to/passenger-install-apache2-module