I enjoy using OpenSolaris when I can, and I've been using it for a couple small Ruby on Rails deployments. I've received a few questions recently about deploying Ruby on Rails app on OpenSolaris, so to kill a few 'birds' with one stone. I'm throwing this post together so that I can just point them here and let them run with it.
Sun has an easy to install meta-package called amp that includes Apache 2.2, Apache 2.2 DTrace probes, MySQL Server 5.1 & PHP. If you've never used Solaris/OpenSolaris before the pfexec command will seem foreign to you. Don't let it worry you its part of the Solaris RBAC (Role Based Access Control) by default the non-root user you created during the install has the root user role and can execute commands as root if you use pfexec.
I'm assuming you're starting from scratch on an OpenSolaris 2009.06 server with nothing extra installed. I also assume you've had some experience with a Unix/Linux variant.
Basics
We want to install some of the GNU stack including gmake, gcc and git + subversion. We're going to install git from source to be sure we're on the latest release.
gmake, gcc, subversion and curl
Commands:
$ pfexec pkg install SUNWgmake
$ pfexec pkg install SUNWgcc
$ pfexec pkg install SUNWsvn
$ pfexec pkg install SUNWcurl
git
curl is required to build git don't skip installing SUNWcurl from above.
Note: There seems to be an issue with building versions of git newer than 1.6.0.6 on OpenSolaris 2009.06. I'll figure out why but in the meantime I've provided instructions for installing git 1.6.0.6. Please verify that /usr/local/bin is in your $PATH.
Commands:
$ pfexec mkdir -p /opt/src
$ pfexec chmod 777 /opt/src
$ cd /opt/src
$ wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.6.0.6.tar.gz
$ tar xzf git-1.6.0.6.tar.gz
$ git-1.6.0.6
$ ./configure
$ gmake
$ pfexec make install
$ git --version
Apache Stack (AMP)
Like I noted above, OpenSolaris has a meta-package we can install that will take care of most of this. It will install the following packages for us:
- MySQL Server 5.1
- Apache 2.2.30
- PHP 5.2.9
Commands:
Enable Apache & MySQL Services
By default the Apache and MySQL services are not enabled. To turn them on run the following commands:
Apache 2:
pfexec svcadm enable http:apache22
MySQL
pfexec svcadm enable mysql
Ruby & Ruby on Rails
First we are going to use the Sun provided Ruby 1.8.7 package that also installs rubygems. Then we will update rubygems, install the gemcutter gem, add http://gems.github.com as a gem source (for legacy purposes), install the rails gems and finally modify our path to include the gem binaries.
pfexec pkg install SUNWruby18
pfexec gem update --system
pfexec gem install gemcutter
gem tumble
gem sources -a http://gems.github.com
pfexec gem install rails
echo 'export PATH=/usr/ruby/1.8/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
echo 'export PATH=/var/ruby/1.8/gem_home/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
(Note: Modifying .profile requires you to re-login to the machine, as it's only read during that point. If you like you can add that same line to your .bashrc file)
Install Database Gems
Mysql:
pfexec gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/mysql/5.1
sqlite3
pfexec gem install sqlite3-ruby
Passenger Installation
We need to install fastthread and passenger, then configure apache to use it. We're going to install passenger from source as it fixes a bug with the use of PTHREAD_STACK_MIN (See here) This is fixed in passenger 2.2.6 and I will update this when that is released.
pfexec gem install fastthread
cd /opt/src
git clone git://github.com/FooBarWidget/passenger.git
cd passenger
pfexec ./bin/passenger-install-apache2-module
Apache Configuration
We're going to keep the passenger configuration in it's own file to keep the httpd.conf clean.
Create the file:
touch /etc/apache2/2.2/conf.d/passenger.conf
Paste the lines from the passenger-install-apache2-module command in that file. My file contains the following:
LoadModule passenger_module /opt/src/passenger/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /opt/src/passenger
PassengerRuby /usr/ruby/1.8/bin/ruby
Let's Test
Lets create a little rails app to verify that rails and passenger
pfexec mkdir -p /data/apps
pfexec chown -R mturner:staff /data/apps
cd /data/apps
rails test
cd test
./script/generate controller helloworld index
pfexec chown -R webservd:webservd test
Lets add a vhost config for apache.
pfexec vim /etc/apache2/2.2/conf.d/test-site.conf
Here is the contents of my file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName test-site.com
DocumentRoot /data/apps/test/public
<Directory /data/apps/test>
Options +FollowSymLinks -SymLinksIfOwnerMatch +MultiViews -Indexes -ExecCGI
AllowOverride ALL
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Add 127.0.0.1 test-site.com to /etc/hosts
Restart Apache
pfexec svcadm restart http:apache22
Test the site in apache and you see the following:
Helloworld#index
Find me in app/views/helloworld/index.html.erb
It Works!!
