I’m a linux noob, and I’m trying to pick a distro for my rails server.
I
don’t want to start a flame-war about linux distros! I’m interested in
the
best distribution for these criteria:
1 - Simplicity of getting ruby and rails set-up (gem updates)
2 - Stability (it is a server, after all)
3 - Support resources (community, and as a fall-back, paid support
available)
4 - Ability to work with Capistrano
I have been considering Debian because of it’s stability. However, I’m
wondering what difficulties I will have getting the latest and greatest
rails and ruby onto it… Any help is appreciated!!! Thanks,
I have been considering Debian because of it’s stability. However, I’m
wondering what difficulties I will have getting the latest and greatest
rails and ruby onto it… Any help is appreciated!!! Thanks,
Eric
I’m using Debian stable (“Sarge”) and I like it. You don’t have to
worry about “getting the latest and greatest rails” since Rails itself
is installed by gems, which is an autonomous packaging system
unrelated to apt-get and the whole stable/unstable issue.
I did however need to build Ruby 1.8.4 myself since it wasn’t
available for Sarge and I wanted that. I also built PostrgesSQL 8.1.3
for the same reason. Looking back on it, I should have used http://backports.org/. Though I guess it would be a hassle anyway,
particularly considering this is the production box and everything
absolutely must work without glitches.
So, the need to compile Ruby 1.8.4 and PostgresSQL were a con. I wish
there was a simpler way: it took several hours, and after viewing all
those build outputs whiz by, I came out of there with a strong sense
of “what the hell happened there?!”.
One thing to consider when running a production server is that “latest
and
greatest” isn’t usually the best idea. I have found that when a new
version
of something is marked stable, it usually isn’t for the first few weeks
or
month. Rails 1.1 is a good example, after it was released as stable a
few
bugs were found and in the following weeks it saw its way up to 1.1.2.
Back to the subject though I would agree that Debian or one of its
variants
would be the best idea. Ubuntu would be a good choice because they have
Ruby 1.8.4, ruby-mysql, rmagick and imagemagick in their package repos.
The
company I work for hosts everything on Red Hat ESL. I would strongly
recommend staying away from this one. I had to compile everything by
hand
because they only keep really old software in their repos (Ruby 1.6).
My experience with Debian sarge was similar. I believe it is the most
simple distro to set up and to maintain. I first installed Xen and have
my
stuff runing on a virtual machine. Like this, if you need a second
server to
test out something, just start up another virtual machine and if it
makes
sense for you, you can even seperate DB and app server into different
virtual machines. The biggest issue I had, was to set up Lighty
1.4.11configured as reverse proxy for dynamic content and with
caching. (and
mod_compress still doesn’t work in my setup for virtual domains).
But there are backports, there is Google, and if everything fails, you
can
compile form source …
Unless you have a reason to use linux, you might also want to
consider FreeBSD. I’ve never really been a system administrator, but
have been successfully (by my criteria) managing my servers. I find
that it’s really easy to get software installed using the ports
system and the freebsd site has great documentation. Not to mention
that FreeBSD is known to be stable. As for support, I’ve always found
all my answers somewhere in the community and never looked into paid
support, however good paid support is always available somewhere.
cd ruby1.8; debuild -us -uc (don’t do this as root since bebuild
So, the need to compile Ruby 1.8.4 and PostgresSQL were a con. I wish
there was a simpler way: it took several hours, and after viewing all
those build outputs whiz by, I came out of there with a strong sense
of “what the hell happened there?!”.
Great. I’ll have a look at this the next time I need to build Ruby on
Debian Stable (i.e. towards the end of this month [RoR is
flourishing!] ;).
Also, the OP - and anyone else deploying on Debian - should take a
look at The Perfect Rails Stack kindly provided by Ezra Z.: http://brainspl.at/rails_stack.html