Hi everybody. I’m still kind of a newbie at anything that exists at a
lower level than the OS, but my company wants to set up a server for the
rails apps that I will shortly be developing for them. Most of the
functions will be only in-house, but some are meant to be accessible by
clients, so I need to set something up that will be strong enough to
handle a little bit of traffic.
So here is my question: What do you recommend as the best or ideal
setup for your apps? Like, right now, they’re running Fedora Core 2 on a
Dell Poweredge 1300 , running some web server I don’t know about (I’m
not officially in the loop yet) to handle static HTML pages.
I’m pretty much stabbing in the dark, but I’m guessing I will need to
install some kind of Linux somewhere on the machine or in a separate
drive and then use Mongrel or Lighttpd or both (do I need both running
at the same time? Does one run off the other? or can I just use one?) to
serve the application. Then I have to learn about networking and figure
out how we can keep one function inside while allowing another function
to go outside. But don’t worry about that.
So my boss is asking me which distribution of Linux is the best, and
since I don’t even know if there is a best distribution for Rails
apps, I need to find some smart people to ask. i.e. you.
So what do you use? Recommend? Warn people away from? What would you do
if you had a machine that you could configure any way you wanted?
I’m in the situation where I can use any setup I want to and I went
with Ubuntu with nginx and mongrel. Had previously used lighttpd but
since Zed released mongrel my life has changed (thanks Zed!) Picking
one linux distro over the other isn’t something I’m comfortable doing
over a mailing list. 
I know a lot of people swear by Solaris but, depending on where you
plan to scale your app, that might be overkill.
Here’s a (somewhat dated) writeup in case you decide to go at it via
Ubuntu:
http://www.urbanpuddle.com/articles/2007/05/09/install-ruby-on-rails-on-ubuntu-feisty-fawn
-VInce
On 7/26/07, Sean C. [email protected] wrote:
Dell Poweredge 1300 , running some web server I don’t know about (I’m
So my boss is asking me which distribution of Linux is the best, and
since I don’t even know if there is a best distribution for Rails
apps, I need to find some smart people to ask. i.e. you.
So what do you use? Recommend? Warn people away from? What would you do
if you had a machine that you could configure any way you wanted?
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
–
support independent business – http://www.buyindie.net/
On 7/26/07, Sean C. [email protected] wrote:
Hi everybody. I’m still kind of a newbie at anything that exists at a
lower level than the OS, but my company wants to set up a server for the
rails apps that I will shortly be developing for them.
Selling my own wares here, but have a look at
http://rubyworks.rubyforge.org. It’s primarily aimed at situations
like yours, and works on several Linux flavors.
So my boss is asking me which distribution of Linux is the best
There is no such things as “the best”, but FC2 is definitely not good
(ancient).
If your sysadmins are already familiar with Fedora, they may want to
stick with something similar. I’d say, CentOS 5 (or Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5, if commercial support is needed).
Best regards,
Alex Verkhovsky
Correction:
Behind that you’ll have web server - of course you’ll choose Mongrel
(maybe w/ mongrel cluster). —>
Behind that you’ll have APP server - of course you’ll choose Mongrel
(maybe w/ mongrel cluster).
D. Krmpotic wrote:
I think the best is to use Ubuntu, because there is the most material
available for this distribution. There’s a lot of tutorials and how-tos
specifically for Ubuntu. It sure makes things easier. If you want
“enterprise linux”, you can go with CentOS. Bu I prefer Debian flavors
of linux alltogether.
Regarding webservers… you’ll need Apache or (even better) nginx as a
web server for serving static content. Behind that you’ll have web
server - of course you’ll choose Mongrel (maybe w/ mongrel cluster).
For deployment you have to find out about Capistrano and also Deprec
gem. Deprec gem helps you set-up your environment. The problem now is
that Capistrano just came out in version 2.0, but deprec is still not
ready for that version. But I think that it’s better to set up
everything yourself at the beginning. At least I like to do it that way.
Once I really know how it’s done, I’ll start using automation for that
as well.
that’s it… I’m also not very long in all of this, but I got a feeling
about what are the best tools for the job… I hope others will agree…
bye
david
I think the best is to use Ubuntu, because there is the most material
available for this distribution. There’s a lot of tutorials and how-tos
specifically for Ubuntu. It sure makes things easier. If you want
“enterprise linux”, you can go with CentOS. Bu I prefer Debian flavors
of linux alltogether.
Regarding webservers… you’ll need Apache or (even better) nginx as a
web server for serving static content. Behind that you’ll have web
server - of course you’ll choose Mongrel (maybe w/ mongrel cluster).
For deployment you have to find out about Capistrano and also Deprec
gem. Deprec gem helps you set-up your environment. The problem now is
that Capistrano just came out in version 2.0, but deprec is still not
ready for that version. But I think that it’s better to set up
everything yourself at the beginning. At least I like to do it that way.
Once I really know how it’s done, I’ll start using automation for that
as well.
that’s it… I’m also not very long in all of this, but I got a feeling
about what are the best tools for the job… I hope others will agree…
bye
david