# Problems setting up radiant on textdrive **URL:** \ **Category:** Radiant CMS\ **Created:** [August 23, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148 "2006-08-23T17:45:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/1 "2006-08-23T17:45:49Z")
Hi all, Sorry, this is a bit of a beginner question I’m afraid, but I’m following the Textdrive instructions to install my ‘application’, and hitting some problems. I’m following the instructions on textdrive for installing a rails application, as several people on this list suggested - I’ve copied over my application directory, and configured lighttpd, and the rails.sh script. However, two things lead me to suspect all is not well. 1. When I start lighttpd and browse to my domain [www.domain.com](http://www.domain.com):port, instead of a system error (500), I get a 404, and if I put an index.html into the public directory, it gets served - suggests this isn’t going through lighttpd. 2. When I try to start the rails app, via their supplied rails.sh, I get: Cannot find gem for Radiant =0.5.2: Install the missing gem with ‘gem install -v=0.5.2 radiant’, or change config/instance.yml to define ‘Gem Version’ with your desired version. when dispatch.fcgi starts up. I assume I have to install Radiant manually, and locally within my textdrive account, but I’ve no idea how - any help gratefully received. If anyone fancied sending me a zip of one of their test testdrive accounts, it would be a great help to be able to check each config file is right. Regards, Jake. ## removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.5/425 - Release Date: 22/08/2006 – No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.5/425 - Release Date: 22/08/2006 ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/2 "2006-08-23T18:01:51Z")
Given that they don’t have the radiant gem installed, I’d suggest simply checking out the SVN copy of radiant onto your local machine and then upping that to your server. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 6:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/3 "2006-08-23T18:15:55Z")
1. Get RadiantCMS from one of the released gems, or just like I did instead, check it out from the subversion repository. I preferred the subversion method. 2. Get TextDrive to assign you a port, make sure lighttpd is listening at that port and you can access it manually via [http://your.site.com](http://your.site.com):port/ which will let you know that the lighttpd/radiant combination is working fine. It seems you did this and you are not sure if the file is being served by Apache or Lighttpd. If you added server.tag = “lighttpd | TextDriven” to your lighttpd.conf, then curl --head [http://your.site.com](http://your.site.com):port/ should let you know whether this is coming from Apache or lighttpd … 1. You need to tell Apache to act as a proxy for lighttpd (which has to run at a port assigned to you by TextDrive). If you check out Radiant from the subversion repository, you will need to create three databases. Before you do this, take a look at config/database.yml in the radiant directory and create those same databases, except that on TextDrive, if your username was jake, the database would instead be jake\_radiant\_live (for the production database). Once you setup your database.yml properly, type rake migrate and you should get a series of lines informing you that X, Y, Z just happened to your database. > From the type of issues you are having, I think you shouldn’t bother > with lighttpd and instead go with mongrel. cd into your radiant > directory and type the following command and you are done with it. cd /users/home/jake/radiant && mongrel\_rails start -e production -p your\_port Then put the same command inside your crontab. Type crontab -e to edit your jobs, and inside it put @reboot cd /users/home/jake/radiant && mongrel\_rails start -e production -p your\_port I think your problem may be with setting up Apache to proxy for lighttpd. You have to do that through TextDrive web console interface … Hope this helps. – G. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 6:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/4 "2006-08-23T18:32:00Z")
Guido S. wrote: > Hope this helps. > Guido, would you mind adding this information to the “How To” page? I’m > sure it would be useful to others. [http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/wiki/HowTos](http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/wiki/HowTos) – John L. [http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com) ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 7:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/5 "2006-08-23T19:08:06Z")
Bug filed on Radiant Trac: Radiant wiki content on Trac should instead be in Radiant [http://dev.radiantcms.org:9007/radiant/ticket/307](http://dev.radiantcms.org:9007/radiant/ticket/307) – G. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 7:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/6 "2006-08-23T19:18:07Z")
Thanks all for the advice. Lots to consider. If I check out Radiant from the GEM or subversion repository, where do I put it on textdrive? Ideally I’d like it in a location that all my secondary domains can reach. Do I need to update a file in my particular radiant instance so that it knows where Radiant is installed? Cheers, Jake. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 6:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/7 "2006-08-23T18:54:04Z")
Done 🙂 [http://dev.radiantcms.org:9007/radiant/wiki/HowToTextDrive](http://dev.radiantcms.org:9007/radiant/wiki/HowToTextDrive) – G. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 7:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/8 "2006-08-23T19:30:10Z")
You can put it anywhere that you want. You will have to set the server.document-root, and the binpath inside the fastcgi.server section as per your needs. If you want this to be accessible from secondary domains, the $HTTP[“host”] =~ “sohne.net” line could be changed to something like $HTTP[“host”] =~ “(.\*.)?sohne.net” Here’s the relevant snippet from my lighttpd.conf file $HTTP[“host”] =~ “sohne.net” { server.document-root = “/users/home/guido/lighttpd/www/radiant/public/” server.errorlog = “/users/home/guido/lighttpd/logs/lighttpd.error.log” accesslog.filename = “/users/home/guido/lighttpd/logs/lighttpd.access.log” url.rewrite = ( “^/$” =\> “index.html”, “^([^.]+)$” =\> “$1.html”) server.error-handler-404 = “/dispatch.fcgi” fastcgi.server = ( “.fcgi” =\> ( “localhost” =\> ( “socket” =\> “/users/home/guido/lighttpd/lighttpd-fcgi.socket”, “bin-path” =\> “/users/home/guido/lighttpd/www/radiant/public/dispatch.fcgi”, “bin-environment” =\> ( “RAILS\_ENV” =\> “production” ), “min-procs” =\> 1, “max-procs” =\> 1, “idle-timeout” =\> 30 ) ) ) } I haven’t actually used secondary domains yet, so you would have to work out the details for yourself, sorry about that. – G. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 7:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/9 "2006-08-23T19:56:12Z")
On 8/23/06, John W. Long [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Guido S. wrote: > > > Radiant wiki content on Trac should instead be in Radiant > > [http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/ticket/307](http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/ticket/307) > > Radiant is not a wiki. Anonymous users can’t contribute content like > they can on the Trac wiki. Trac is the right tool for the job to manage > a development Web site. That’s probably another bug 🙂 If Radiant can eventually accept anonymous comments in a blog, why can’t it allow anonymous editing of content? Do you think this could be done with a behaviour? Or you made the assumption early on to NOT allow anonymous editing? How do blog comments fit into this? – G. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 7:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/10 "2006-08-23T19:48:11Z")
Guido S. wrote: > Radiant wiki content on Trac should instead be in Radiant > [http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/ticket/307](http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/ticket/307) Radiant is not a wiki. Anonymous users can’t contribute content like they can on the Trac wiki. Trac is the right tool for the job to manage a development Web site. > [http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/wiki/HowToTextDrive](http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/wiki/HowToTextDrive) Thanks for this. I’m sure it will be useful to others. 🙂 – John L. [http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com) ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 11:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/11 "2006-08-23T23:28:37Z")
On Aug 23, 2006, at 11:54 AM, Guido S. wrote: > How do blog comments fit into this? Right now the RadiantCMS weblog seems to be relying on HaloScan [http://www.haloscan.com/](http://www.haloscan.com/) to handle comments. HaloScan works with static sites perfectly well; Hobix users often use it instead of Hobix’s rather broken commenting system. I believe it’s implemented using a bit of JavaScript and the concession that comments show up on a different page. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a perfectly legitimate solution to the problem. The solution I’m going to use on a site I’m building, however, is to install Radiant to handle the site portion and Typo to handle the blog portion. It’s worth noting that Typo has a simple “page” functionality. I wouldn’t want to build a complex site with Typo’s page facility; by the same token, I don’t want to try to host a complex blog with Radiant’s functionality. Different problems demand different tools. It’s not difficult to take a design and make a Typo theme from it while also applying it to Radiant, or any other well- designed web program. Sites of even moderate complexity eventually have to do this – and notice the RadiantCMS site itself applies the same theme to Trac, which isn’t even Ruby and has its own strange templating system. I can’t think of a single other OSS project which has tackled Trac’s theming system. There’s a slippery slope problem here. One thing I remember hating about Drupal is that everything was ultimately a node, and nodes, intentionally or not, were basically blog entries. So every Drupal site except the most painstakingly coded winds up feeling like a blog. The fact that everything in Drupal can be commented on certainly contributed to this sensation. I’d strongly advocate not adding comment functionality into the core of Radiant because of the excellent bad example we have in Drupal. – Daniel Lyons removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2006, 4:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/12 "2006-08-24T04:29:00Z")
Wait until I’m back from vacation, I’m working on a comments behavior. 😉 Sean C. [seancribbs.com](http://seancribbs.com) ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2006, 12:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/13 "2006-08-26T12:02:55Z")
Thanks to all (especially Guido and John) for their help and advice. Eventually I used snippets from lots of different posts (including John’s post on setting up on [www.hostingrails.com](http://www.hostingrails.com)), but have finally ended up with Radiant sitting nicely behind Lighttpd on TextDrive, and I think the process of installing it is pretty simple (now I know what I’m doing!). I’m new to Rails and Radiant, and as such I think many of my problems can be put down to me not understanding fully the architecture of either Radiant or Rails apps in general. But given there are probably plenty of other people in my boat, I think I’ll have a bash at documenting what I’ve done, so that I can do it again, and so that it might give someone else a helping hand. I’ll forward the link once it’s done. Cheers everyone. Jake. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2006, 2:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/14 "2006-09-04T14:46:22Z")
Jake Liddell wrote: > I’m new to Rails and Radiant, and as such I think many of my problems can be > put down to me not understanding fully the architecture of either Radiant or > Rails apps in general. But given there are probably plenty of other people > in my boat, I think I’ll have a bash at documenting what I’ve done, so that > I can do it again, and so that it might give someone else a helping hand. > I’ll forward the link once it’s done. That would be awesome. Thank you Jake. Congrats on getting it installed. – John L. [http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com) ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e9a140/32.png) [@Jake\_Liddell](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jake_Liddell)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2006, 8:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/problems-setting-up-radiant-on-textdrive/66148/15 "2006-08-23T20:08:14Z")
Guido S. wrote: > On 8/23/06, John W. Long [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > Radiant is not a wiki. Anonymous users can’t contribute content like > > they can on the Trac wiki. Trac is the right tool for the job to manage > > a development Web site. > > That’s probably another bug 🙂 Or a feature. 😉 > If Radiant can eventually accept anonymous comments in a blog, why > can’t it allow anonymous editing of content? Do you think this could > be done with a behaviour? Maybe. > Or you made the assumption early on to NOT allow anonymous editing? I haven’t ruled it out. > How do blog comments fit into this? It will be a plugin. – John L. [http://wiseheartdesign.com](http://wiseheartdesign.com)