Hi,
I just started out learning Ruby on Rails this week. I’m using Michael
Hartl’s book, but I’m working on a remote server rather than my local
computer. As such, I’m using Apache + Passenger to deploy the example
programs rather than Mongrel. Also, I’m using MySQL for my database
instead of SQLite.
My issue is that I don’t understand how to deploy a program on a
remote server using Apache + Passenger in a way that makes the
contents of the views directory accessible. For instance, if I create
a sample program ‘demo_app’ and create a ‘users’ resource with the
command:
$ script/generate scaffold User name:string email:string
and then migrate with the command:
$ rake db:migrate
I can’t see the ‘users’ folder or anything in it when I point my
browser to the remote server. I can see the standard ‘Welcome aboard!’
page at http://<server_addr>/demo_app, but
http://<server_addr>/demo_app/users
gives me a 404 Not Found. In my apache2.conf file, I have the
following VirtualHost specification:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName <server_addr>
DocumentRoot /projects/demo_app/public
RailsBaseURI /demo_app
In my web root directory, ‘demo_app’ is a symbolic link to the
application’s public directory. I realize that there’s nothing in my
web root directory or the above VirtualHost specification that points
to the ‘users’ resource, but when I build this app locally and view it
with Mongrel, I can see http://0.0.0.0:3000/users just fine. All of
the documentation I’ve read indicates that the above specification and
symbolic link are all I need to create to deploy an app on a remote
server with Apache + Passenger. Do I need to do something else to
access http://<server_addr>/demo_app/users? Have I missed an obvious
or elementary step? Am I misunderstanding something? Am I on another
planet?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Frank,
On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 8:45 PM, FrankMurphy
[email protected]wrote:
I can see the standard ‘Welcome aboard!’
page at http://<server_addr>/demo_app,
Just a swag here, but did you delete public/index.html on the remote
server?
Best regards,
Bill
On May 22, 2:45 am, FrankMurphy [email protected] wrote:
planet?
Deploying an app to a sub uri (rather than to the root of your domain)
is not the simplest case - you might want to try that first to
reassure yourself that everything is basically working. What you’ve
done doesn’t seem to quite match the instructions at
Phusion Passenger users guide, Apache version
Fred
Hi Fred,
On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Frederick C. <
[email protected]> wrote:
On May 22, 2:45 am, FrankMurphy [email protected] wrote:
Deploying an app to a sub uri (rather than to the root of your domain)
I missed that. Excellent catch, as always.
Best regards,
Bill
On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 06:45:11PM -0700, FrankMurphy wrote:
http://<server_addr>/demo_app,
That’s a good sign.
but http://<server_addr>/demo_app/users gives me a 404 Not Found.
Did you generate the new scaffold after your app was already running
under
Passenger? If so, and it’s environment is set to production, did you
modify
the tmp/restart.txt file in your app to signal Passenger to restart the
application?
but when I build this app locally and view it with Mongrel, I can see
http://0.0.0.0:3000/users just fine.
That’s probably also a good sign. I bet you just need to have Passenger
reload the app as mentioned above. Details can be found at:
http://www.modrails.com/documentation/Users%20guide.html#_redeploying_restarting_the_ruby_on_rails_application
–
Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX
What’s the definition of a legacy system? One that works!
Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.
FrankMurphy wrote:
Thanks everyone for your replies.
Okay, so this is interesting. When I try deploying the app to the
domain root, I can’t see the “Welcome aboard!” page; instead, I see
the index.html page that’s in Apache’s web root directory. Also, when
I try http://<server_addr>/users, I see a directory listing of the
(.erb) files that are in the demo_app/app/views/users. Does this mean
that Passenger is not set up correctly?
Yes.
For your own sanity, set up Rails on your local box and don’t worry
about the remote server yet.
I don’t know if it matters, but the server I’m using doesn’t have a
domain name; I’m accessing it using its IP address.
Shouldn’t matter.
On May 21, 7:47�pm, Frederick C. [email protected]
Best,
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]
Okay, I got it to work on the domain root by editing /etc/apache2/
sites-available/default to point to the app’s public directory. Is
that the right way to go about it, or is that just a hack? If that’s
what I’m supposed to do, it seems odd that this step isn’t mentioned
in the mod_rails user guide. I still can’t get it to work on a sub-uri
using an analogous technique (i.e., creating a virtual host file for
the URI in /etc/apache2/sites-available)…
Thanks everyone for your replies.
Okay, so this is interesting. When I try deploying the app to the
domain root, I can’t see the “Welcome aboard!” page; instead, I see
the index.html page that’s in Apache’s web root directory. Also, when
I try http://<server_addr>/users, I see a directory listing of the
(.erb) files that are in the demo_app/app/views/users. Does this mean
that Passenger is not set up correctly?
I don’t know if it matters, but the server I’m using doesn’t have a
domain name; I’m accessing it using its IP address.
On May 21, 7:47 pm, Frederick C. [email protected]
On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 8:35 PM, FrankMurphy [email protected]
wrote:
Thanks everyone for your replies.
Okay, so this is interesting. When I try deploying the app to the
domain root, I can’t see the “Welcome aboard!” page; instead, I see
the index.html page that’s in Apache’s web root directory. Also, when
I try http://<server_addr>/users, I see a directory listing of the
(.erb) files that are in the demo_app/app/views/users. Does this mean
that Passenger is not set up correctly?
I don’t know if it matters, but the server I’m using doesn’t have a
domain name; I’m accessing it using its IP address.
Yes I think that matters, in the example you gave in the first post you
had
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName <server_addr>
DocumentRoot /projects/demo_app/public
RailsBaseURI /demo_app
This is what Apache calls a name-based virtual host
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/name-based.html
If you use an ip address like 192.168.1.123 as the value for the
ServerName directive, apache will do a reverse dns search to try to
find a NAME.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#servername
If the server actually has a unique ip address for the app, then you
might look at setting up an ip address based virtual host after
reading the caveats in the first section of the first url I cited.
But the simpler thing would probably be to use a name based vhost and
configure the client’s dns to resolve the name to the ip address so
you can use it in the browser urls.
Just putting a line in /etc/hosts (or the equivalent if the client is
a doze machine) should be enough.
–
Rick DeNatale
Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Github: rubyredrick (Rick DeNatale) · GitHub
Twitter: @RickDeNatale
WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale